LeetCode Gate
Lock VS Code behind a daily coding challenge. Solve an Easy or Medium LeetCode-style problem every morning to unlock your editor for the day.
How it works
- VS Code opens → the extension activates automatically.
- If you haven't solved today's problem yet, a full-screen problem panel opens.
- Every text editor you try to open is immediately closed and you're redirected back to the problem.
- Write your JavaScript solution in the built-in editor, then click Run Tests.
- When all test cases pass, a success animation plays and VS Code unlocks for the rest of the day.
- At midnight the gate resets — a fresh problem awaits tomorrow.
Problem bank
14 hand-crafted problems across two difficulty tiers:
| # |
Title |
Difficulty |
| 1 |
Two Sum |
Easy |
| 2 |
Valid Parentheses |
Easy |
| 3 |
Palindrome Number |
Easy |
| 4 |
Maximum Subarray |
Easy |
| 5 |
Climbing Stairs |
Easy |
| 6 |
Contains Duplicate |
Easy |
| 7 |
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock |
Easy |
| 8 |
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters |
Medium |
| 9 |
Container With Most Water |
Medium |
| 10 |
Product of Array Except Self |
Medium |
| 11 |
Jump Game |
Medium |
| 12 |
Group Anagrams |
Medium |
| 13 |
Rotate Array |
Medium |
| 14 |
Coin Change |
Medium |
The daily problem is selected deterministically by day-of-year, so the same problem is shown all day even if VS Code restarts.
Commands
| Command |
Description |
LeetCode Gate: Show Today's Problem |
Re-opens the problem panel at any time |
LeetCode Gate: Reset Today's Progress (Dev) |
Clears today's solved state — useful for testing |
Building & running locally
cd leetcode-gate
npm install
npm run compile # TypeScript → out/
npm test # Run Vitest unit tests
Then press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host.
Architecture
src/
├── extension.ts Entry point — activation & blocking logic
├── GatekeeperState.ts Persists solved state in VS Code's global storage
├── ProblemStore.ts Problem bank with test cases and comparators
├── SolutionValidator.ts Runs user code in an isolated vm sandbox
├── GatekeeperPanel.ts Webview panel — problem UI and message bridge
├── SolutionValidator.spec.ts
├── ProblemStore.spec.ts
└── GatekeeperState.spec.ts
Blocking mechanism
onDidChangeActiveTextEditor fires whenever a text editor gains focus. While the gate is active, the listener immediately runs workbench.action.closeActiveEditor and re-reveals the problem webview. WebviewPanels are not text editors, so the panel itself is never affected.
Solution validation
User code is executed inside a vm.createContext() sandbox with:
- A 3-second timeout to prevent infinite loops
- Only safe ECMAScript globals (no
require, process, or filesystem access)
console.log silently suppressed (but present so solutions don't crash)
License
MIT
