Issue #168  (Copilot Open Sourced)07/09/25

If you want to explore any GitHub repository using a similar UI as the native version of VS Code, here's an often-forgotten tip.

Go to any GitHub repo and hit the "." (dot) key and that repository will be opened in the web version of VS Code right inside your browser.
 
In the example above, I've visited the official React repo and hit the dot key to open the repo in VS Code for web.

This might be a good way to search a repository or navigate around the codebase without needing to officially fork it.
 
In the above screenshot, I've searched for the term "SSR" in the React codebase. The results are pretty quick, so this is a nice option that might save some time. Note that you have to be logged in to GitHub for this to work. You can also just change a GitHub URL to use ".dev" instead of ".com" and you'll get the same result (or else it will ask you to log in with GitHub to proceed).

Now on to this week's hand-picked links!
 

VS Code Tools

Code Mind Map — A VS Code extension Visualize and navigate your code as an interactive mind map, directly within your editor. Also available for Visual Studio.

Proofread — A VS Code extension that offers Proofread text and Translate text commands in VS Code, as a simple alternative to DeepL, Grammarly, and similar tools.

From Paper Lists to Amazon Prime, Times Have Changed — While fast shipping and exclusive shows are well-known, these 9 hidden perks can take your membership to the next level.   Sponsor 

Catppuccin Icons — A pastel icon theme for VS Code featuring the 'soothing colors' from the Catppuccin palette, with a growing collection of language/technology specific icons.

VS Code Articles & Videos

📺 Copilot Open Sourced! w/ Erich Gamma and Kai Maetzel — From the Syntax podcast, Scott and Wes are joined by Erich Gamma, creator of VS Code, and Kai Maetzel, Copilot Lead, to share some big news about the future of VS Code and Copilot.

GitHub Integration in VS Code Using Docker MCP: A Step-by-Step Tutorial — This tutorial walks through setting up a Docker-based GitHub MCP server and using it in VS Code for a seamless, containerized development experience.

The Morning Paper for Tech — Want a byte-sized version of Hacker News that takes just a few minutes to read? Try TLDR's free daily newsletter. It covers the most interesting tech, startup, and programming stories in just 5 minutes. No sports and no politics.   Sponsor 

Open Source AI Editor: First Milestone — Official blog post from the VS Code team on the recent open sourcing of the GitHub Copilot Chat extension and what's on the horizon for making VS Code an open source AI editor.

Best of the Rest

Jules — From Google, an experimental coding agent that helps you fix bugs, add documentation, and build new features. It integrates with GitHub, understands your codebase, and works asynchronously.

Vim After Bram: A Core Maintainer on How They’ve Kept It Going — In 2023, Vim's creator sadly passed away. This article looks at how the community has kept Vim going since then.

Web Tools Weekly — A weekly newsletter featuring tools, plugins, scripts and other useful apps for JavaScript, CSS, SVG, AI, React, Vue.js, mobile development, and lots more.   Sponsor 

magenta.nvim — A plugin for leveraging LLM agents in Neovim that provides a chat window where you can talk to your AI coding assistant, as well as tools to populate context and perform inline edits.

Suggestions?

If you have any link suggestions, including a tool, article, or other resource related to VS Code or another IDE, you can hit reply, send it via DM on X, or via chat on Bluesky.

That's it for this issue.

Happy VS Coding!
Louis
VSCode.Email
@LouisLazaris