Visual Studio Code website screenshot

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a free, open-source, cross-platform code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS, and the web, built on the MIT-licensed Code - OSS project and distinguished by features such as IntelliSense, debugging, integrated Git, and a marketplace with tens of thousands of extensions. VS Code is not a SaaS REST API; instead, developers extend the editor through the Extension API, a TypeScript / JavaScript programmatic interface that exposes nearly every aspect of the editor for customization. This index points to the Extension API documentation and surrounding developer resources.

Visual Studio Code publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Code Editor, Developer Tools, IDE, Open Source, and Extension API.

Visual Studio Code’s developer surface includes documentation, GitHub presence, engineering blog, and 6 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
11.9/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Front door AI 6/6 dominant Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-10-04 · rubric v0.23.0
1 API
Code EditorDeveloper ToolsIDEOpen SourceExtension APIMicrosoft

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-10-04 · rubric v0.23.0
Composite quality — 11.9/100 · emerging
Contract Quality 0.0 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 5.3 / 17
Access Clarity 0.0 / 17
Operational Transparency 0.6 / 11
Contract Governance 0.0 / 10
Discoverability 5.5 / 9
Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15
Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Delegated User Identity 0 / 6
Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5
Registration Without a Human 0 / 6
Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/visual-studio-code: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Visual Studio Code Extension API

Programmatic TypeScript / JavaScript API for building VS Code extensions. The Extension API exposes editor UI, language features, debugging adapters, themes, webviews, source co...

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Visual Studio Code Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub
GitHub

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Issue Tracker
Issue Tracker

Company 3

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn
LinkedIn
 Website
Website
 Blog
Blog

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Download
Download
 Marketplace
Marketplace

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: visual-studio-code
name: Visual Studio Code
x-parent: microsoft
description: Visual Studio Code is a free, open-source, cross-platform code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux,
  macOS, and the web, built on the MIT-licensed Code - OSS project and distinguished by features such as IntelliSense, debugging,
  integrated Git, and a marketplace with tens of thousands of extensions. VS Code is not a SaaS REST API; instead, developers
  extend the editor through the Extension API, a TypeScript / JavaScript programmatic interface that exposes nearly every
  aspect of the editor for customization. This index points to the Extension API documentation and surrounding developer resources.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - microsoft/vscode
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - repository-not-product
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/visual-studio-code.png
tags:
- Code Editor
- Developer Tools
- IDE
- Open Source
- Extension API
- Microsoft
tags_raw:
- Code Editor
- Developer Tools
- IDE
- Open Source
- Extension API
- Microsoft
- Open-Source
url: https://code.visualstudio.com
created: '2026-05-11'
modified: '2026-05-11'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: visual-studio-code:extension-api
  name: Visual Studio Code Extension API
  description: Programmatic TypeScript / JavaScript API for building VS Code extensions. The Extension API exposes editor
    UI, language features, debugging adapters, themes, webviews, source control providers, tasks, and more. It is not a REST
    API and has no base URL or authentication scheme; extensions run inside the VS Code process and are distributed through
    the Visual Studio Marketplace.
  humanURL: https://code.visualstudio.com/api
  tags:
  - Extension API
  - Editor Customization
  - Language Server
  - Debug Adapter
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://code.visualstudio.com/api
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/vscode-api
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/get-started/your-first-extension
  - type: Marketplace
    url: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/visual-studio-code-domain-security.yml
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/vs-code
- type: Website
  url: https://code.visualstudio.com
- type: Documentation
  url: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs
- type: Download
  url: https://code.visualstudio.com/download
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode
- type: Marketplace
  url: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode
- type: Issue Tracker
  url: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues
- type: Blog
  url: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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