Visual Studio Code is a code editor that supports editing, navigating, understanding, debugging, and extending software projects. Developers use it for the edit-build-debug cycle, and the catalogue add-ons provide skills, instructions, and agents for working within the editor.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/vscode. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/vscode/main/.github/instructions/buildNext.instructions.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/vscodeWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/vscode/buildnext)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/vscode/buildnext"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/buildnext/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/vscode/buildnext"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/buildnext.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.09649 | $0.09649 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.03860 | $0.03860 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01930 | $0.01930 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00965 | $0.00965 |
Grade A, and why
vscode buildNext.instructions.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 443 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Working Notes: New esbuild-based Build System
These notes are for AI agents to help with context in new or summarized sessions.
Important: Validating Changes
The VS Code - Build task is NOT needed to validate changes in the build/ folder!
Build scripts in build/ are TypeScript files that run directly with node (e.g., node build/next/index.ts). They are not compiled by the main VS Code build.
To test changes:
# Test transpile
node build/next/index.ts transpile --out out-test
# Test bundle (server-web target to test the auth fix)
node build/next/index.ts bundle --nls --target server-web --out out-vscode-reh-web-test
# Verify product config was injected
grep -l "serverLicense" out-vscode-reh-web-test/vs/code/browser/workbench/workbench.js
Architecture Overview
Files
- index.ts - Main build orchestrator
build-fastcommand: Persistent non-watch incremental development buildtranspilecommand: Fast TS → JS usingesbuild.transform()bundlecommand: TS → bundled JS usingesbuild.build()
- build-fast.ts - Git change discovery, persistent state, lane planning, and orchestration
- transpile.ts - Shared full/watch/incremental transpile and copy operations
- resources.ts - Curated production resource selection and copied JavaScript minification
- standalone.ts - Unbundled desktop Electron preloads and their source-map publication
- nls-plugin.ts - NLS (localization) esbuild plugin
- private-to-property.ts - Native private to property transformation
- svg.ts - Production-only SVG finishing, independent of the legacy gulp infrastructure
Fast Non-Watch Incremental Builds
npm run build-fast stores its last successful input state in .build/build-fast/state.json. It uses scoped Git deltas plus content hashes for currently dirty/untracked inputs, so a repeated invocation can skip every build lane without running a watcher or scanning all source files.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 9d ago Changed · +6 lines · +243 tokens per session 995ba715b6d8
- 27d ago Changed · +12 lines · +568 tokens per session 52f50e08259f
- 1mo ago Changed · +19 lines · +579 tokens per session ef383977186e
- 1mo ago Changed · +59 lines · +1,474 tokens per session a6fa39c9af14
- 1mo ago First seen · 347 lines · 6,785 tokens per session scan A 15fe3cdbaefe
vscode buildNext.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/vscode (193,657 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 9,649 tokens to every session, about $0.0386 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
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