Xiaohongshu Fisher

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Browse and read Xiaohongshu notes in VS Code. The current version provides Home, Explore, and Search Results views, an integrated note reader, and links to open notes in your system browser.

Account risk warning

Xiaohongshu issued a risk-control warning during debugging with a real account. The exact cause has not been confirmed. Using this extension may trigger verification, access restrictions, or account suspension; account safety cannot be guaranteed. Users and developers should proceed carefully, avoid using their primary accounts, and avoid frequent logins or refreshes. If you receive a warning, stop immediately and follow the official instructions. Do not repeatedly retry or attempt to bypass restrictions.

Usage

1. Open Xiaohongshu in the Activity Bar.
2. On first use, select Scan to Log In on the sidebar welcome page, or use the login icon in any view's title bar. The login page automatically fetches and displays a QR code. Scan it with the Xiaohongshu app and confirm the login; no separate image editor is needed. By default, the extension starts a dedicated headless Chromium instance in the background.
3. Return to VS Code and select Refresh in the Home or Explore view's title bar. To search, run xiaohongshu-fisher: Search Xiaohongshu Notes from the Search Results view.
4. Select a note to open the integrated reader. The reader also offers Open in Browser.

If Playwright Chromium is missing, run Install Playwright Chromium from the Command Palette. This command uses npm exec in a VS Code terminal to run the Playwright CLI bundled with the extension and install Chromium. Install Node.js and npm on the extension host first and ensure node and npm are available in the terminal. pnpm is not required for users. On Linux, the command also installs system dependencies and may require sudo privileges. The extension does not silently download a browser during activation. After installation, reopen the login page or refresh a list.

When a QR code expires, select Refresh QR Code on the login page to display a new code in the same place. The code is cleared after a successful login, expiration, an error, or closing the page. Opening login again returns to the existing login page. If a list reports that your session has expired, select Scan to Log In directly in that list. Users with an existing session can refresh or search from the welcome page.

The login assistant listens for the official page's QR creation response. The extension host validates the login URL, encodes it as a PNG, and displays it through a restricted in-memory image resource. WebView messages carry only display state and a temporary image address, never QR image bytes, cookies, or raw login parameters. QR codes are not written to the workspace.

When using Remote SSH or a container, check the network used by the remote host or container running the extension; it may differ from your local computer's network. If the official page reports an IP risk on the current network, the extension stops the operation and waits for a manual retry. It does not automatically bypass platform restrictions.

Data and privacy

• You complete login yourself on Xiaohongshu's official website. The extension does not collect passwords or verification codes.
• Login sessions are stored in a dedicated browser profile under the extension's VS Code global storage directory. The extension does not read your default browser's data or write session data to workspace settings.
• Run xiaohongshu-fisher: Clear Xiaohongshu Session to close the browser and delete the extension's saved profile. Running this command before uninstalling the extension is recommended.
• Note bodies are used only in the current reader and are not saved to the workspace or a persistent cache. The extension performs only user-triggered, read-only browsing, searching, and note retrieval.
• Content comes from Xiaohongshu web pages, whose structure and available sections may change. If login verification, access restrictions, or parsing failures occur, check the official message and retry manually later. The extension does not automatically handle verification or bypass access restrictions.

Requirements and limitations

• Desktop VS Code and Playwright Chromium are required. VS Code Remote SSH and containers are supported, but Chromium system dependencies must be installed and verified separately on each host.
• The browser installation command requires Node.js and npm on the host running the extension. For Remote SSH or containers, install them on the remote host or inside the container.
• This extension is a community tool and is not an official Xiaohongshu product. Follow the platform's rules and use your own judgment when deciding how to use it.

Commands

Development

Follow the account risk warning when developing or debugging. Prefer mock data, and do not use real login sessions in automated tests or CI.

pnpm install
pnpm run compile
pnpm run lint
pnpm run test:unit

The full pnpm test command also requires a graphical environment capable of launching VS Code Electron.

The project uses ESLint for code quality and readability and Prettier for consistent formatting. pnpm run lint runs both checks and fails on warnings.

Use pnpm run format to format source files and tool and editor configuration. Use pnpm run lint:fix to apply available automatic fixes and format files. pnpm run format:check checks formatting without changing files.

The workspace recommends the ESLint and Prettier extensions and enables format on save for TypeScript, JavaScript, and JSON. See AGENTS.md for code style and comment requirements.

Packaging and installing a VSIX

Use pnpm to package the extension with the version of vsce locked in this repository. After updating the repository, run pnpm install again even if dependencies were previously installed, so that the local dependency layout matches the repository configuration.

pnpm install
pnpm run compile
pnpm run lint
pnpm run test:unit
pnpm run package

Packaging automatically compiles the extension and runs test:package, which verifies that the Playwright files selected for packaging can load independently in a temporary directory outside the repository. Because vsce cannot preserve symlink relationships from pnpm's default dependency layout, this repository uses a flat layout through nodeLinker: hoisted in pnpm-workspace.yaml. The extracted VSIX must be able to resolve playwright and playwright-core, so do not package with --no-dependencies.

After successful packaging, xiaohongshu-fisher-0.0.1.vsix is created in the repository root. Choose Install from VSIX… in the VS Code Extensions view, or use the following command to replace an older installation:

code --install-extension xiaohongshu-fisher-0.0.1.vsix --force

Reload the VS Code window after replacing the installation. See the extension publishing documentation for publishing commands and full requirements.

Troubleshooting extension activation

If installing the VSIX results in command 'xiaohongshu-fisher.refreshHomeFeed' not found, check Output → Log (Extension Host) for activation errors. If playwright or playwright-core cannot be found, reinstall dependencies, package the extension, replace the installed VSIX, and reload the window as described above. These modules are loaded before activation; if they are missing, no commands can be registered. Installing Chromium does not fix this issue.

Troubleshooting the browser

If headless Chromium cannot start, select Xiaohongshu Fisher in the Output panel to inspect the platform, error category, and names of missing shared libraries.

• Missing system dependencies (such as libatk-1.0.so.0): run Install Playwright Chromium from the Command Palette. When developing in this repository, you can also run pnpm exec playwright install-deps chromium from the repository directory to install only system dependencies.
• Missing browser runtime: run Install Playwright Chromium to install the Chromium headless shell used by the extension.
• Sandbox, directory permissions, or session conflicts: check host or container permissions based on the error, or close browser or VS Code windows using the same session before retrying.

For Remote SSH and Dev Containers, install dependencies on the remote host or inside the container running the extension. Installing them on your local computer will not fix remote startup failures. Linux system dependencies are installed through the system package manager. If you do not have sudo privileges, ask an administrator to install them or include them in the container image.

Interface language

The extension supports English and Simplified Chinese and follows the VS Code display language automatically. Run Configure Display Language in VS Code to switch languages, then restart when prompted. Unsupported languages and missing translations fall back to English. The extension does not provide a separate language setting.

Commands, settings, sidebar views, QR login controls, and reader controls are localized. Xiaohongshu notes, nicknames, and official page content remain in their original language. Diagnostic logs in the Xiaohongshu Fisher output channel are always in English.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.