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/coding-guidelines.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/coding-guidelines)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/microsoft/vscode/coding-guidelines"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/coding-guidelines/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/coding-guidelines"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/microsoft/vscode/coding-guidelines.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 | $0.00916 | $0.00916 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00366 | $0.00366 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00183 | $0.00183 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00092 | $0.00092 |
Grade A, and why
vscode coding-guidelines.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 1mo 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 — 70 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Coding Guidelines
Canonical reference: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/wiki/Coding-Guidelines
Also see the Source Code Organization wiki page.
Indentation
Use tabs, not spaces.
Naming
- PascalCase for types and enum values
- camelCase for functions, methods, properties, and local variables
- Use whole words when possible
Types
- Do not export types or functions unless shared across multiple components
- Do not introduce new types or values to the global namespace
Comments
- Use JSDoc style comments for functions, interfaces, enums, and classes
- Do not write large comments in the middle of a method or comments that explain a single line. If a line or block needs a paragraph of explanation to be understood, treat that as a signal that the code itself is unclear: extract a well-named function, introduce an explanatory variable, or simplify the logic instead. Keep any remaining inline comment to a brief note.
- Default to NO comment. Add one only when the code cannot be made self-explanatory by naming. Code that is obvious from its identifiers must not be commented.
- Hard limits (treat as rules, not suggestions):
- JSDoc on a function/interface/property: at most 1–2 short sentences. Do not enumerate every branch/feature, restate the signature, list what it does NOT do, or explain parameters that are obvious from their names/types.
- Inline comment inside a method body: at most 1 line, and only for a genuine workaround/hack, a non-obvious ordering constraint, or a surprising side effect. Never narrate the next statement (e.g.
// Expand the variable,// loop over args).
- Before writing any comment longer than one line, stop and either delete it or shorten it to a single line. A multi-line block comment inside a method body is almost always wrong.
Strings
"double quotes"for user-visible strings that need localization'single quotes'for everything else- All user-visible strings must be externalized via
nls.localize()— no string concatenation, use{0}placeholders
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 70 lines · 916 tokens per session scan A 0cd79cd3affd
vscode coding-guidelines.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/vscode (193,657 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 916 tokens to every session, about $0.0037 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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