VS Code Learn
Level up your VS Code learning journey without leaving the editor.
VS Code Learn brings the official VS Code Learn courses into a focused, gamified extension experience. Browse courses, read lessons in an embedded Markdown reader, track your progress locally, and unlock achievements as you build momentum.
Why install VS Code Learn?
- Learn where you code — open lessons directly inside VS Code with a clean embedded reader.
- Track your journey — mark lessons started or complete and revisit your learning history.
- Unlock achievements — earn milestone badges for first steps, streaks, course completion, and more.
- Stay focused — browse the VS Code Learn course catalog from the Activity Bar.
- Works offline — a generated course catalog ships with the extension, and content is cached locally once it is loaded.
- Local-first by design — progress, history, and achievements stay in VS Code global storage.
What is VS Code Learn?
VS Code Learn is a collection of official learning content from the VS Code team. It helps developers discover editor features, customize their setup, and build better workflows with step-by-step guidance.
This extension wraps that learning content in a more interactive experience:
- Open the VS Code Learn Activity Bar view.
- Pick a course and lesson.
- Read the lesson in VS Code.
- Mark progress as you go.
- Celebrate achievements as you complete milestones.
Features
Course catalog
Browse the bundled VS Code Learn course catalog from the sidebar. Refresh the catalog at any time with VS Code Learn: Refresh Course Catalog.
Embedded lesson reader
Lessons open in a VS Code webview with rendered Markdown, links, and actions for progress tracking.
Progress tracking
Track started and completed lessons locally. Reset one lesson, all progress, or all extension data whenever you need a fresh start.
Achievements and history
Earn themed achievement badges and review recent learning activity from dedicated sidebar views.
Commands
Open the Command Palette and search for VS Code Learn to find:
- VS Code Learn: Show Dashboard
- VS Code Learn: Open Lesson
- VS Code Learn: Refresh Course Catalog
- VS Code Learn: Show Achievements
- VS Code Learn: Mark Lesson Started
- VS Code Learn: Mark Lesson Complete
- VS Code Learn: Reset Lesson Progress
- VS Code Learn: Reset All Progress
- VS Code Learn: Reset All Data
Data source
The extension uses the public microsoft/vscode-docs repository:
learn/toc.json provides course order, titles, descriptions, and lesson paths.learn/{area}/{lesson}.md provides Markdown lesson content for the embedded reader.
A generated catalog is bundled so the extension works offline. Runtime sync checks for updates at most once every 24 hours by default and can be triggered manually with VS Code Learn: Refresh Course Catalog.
Privacy
VS Code Learn is local-first:
- No account is required.
- No leaderboard is used.
- No telemetry is collected by this extension.
- Progress, achievement state, and history are stored in VS Code global state.
- Lesson Markdown is cached in extension global storage after it is fetched.
Development
npm install
npm run compile
npm test
npm run generate:catalog
Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host.
Publishing
Releases are published to the VS Code Marketplace automatically by the
Publish GitHub Actions workflow whenever a
GitHub Release is published. A separate CI workflow
compiles, tests, and packages the extension on every push and pull request.
One-time setup
- Create a publisher. Sign in at the
Visual Studio Marketplace publisher portal
and create a publisher. The publisher ID must match the
publisher field in
package.json (currently vs-publisher-473885).
- Create a Personal Access Token (PAT). In
Azure DevOps, create a token with Marketplace →
Manage scope (organization: All accessible organizations).
- Add the token as a repository secret named
VSCE_PAT
(GitHub repo → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions).
The workflow also accepts VSCE_TOKEN for compatibility with other repos.
- (Optional) To also publish to Open VSX, add an
OVSX_PAT secret. If it is absent the workflow simply skips that step.
Versioning
The published version is set automatically to 1.0.<build-number>, where the
build number is the GitHub Actions run number of the Publish workflow. You never
need to bump the version manually — each publish gets a unique, increasing version.
(The version in package.json is only a placeholder for local development.)
Cutting a release
Just trigger the Publish workflow — no version bump needed:
- Create a GitHub Release (recommended), or
- Run it manually via Actions → Publish → Run workflow.
The workflow tests, stamps the version as 1.0.<run-number>, packages, publishes to
the Marketplace, and always handles the GitHub release artifact:
- If triggered by a GitHub release event, it attaches the
.vsix to that release.
- If triggered manually, it automatically creates a GitHub release/tag
v1.0.<run-number> and uploads the .vsix.
Publishing manually from your machine
npm run package # creates the .vsix locally
npx @vscode/vsce login vs-publisher-473885
npm run publish # or: npx @vscode/vsce publish
Local storage locations
- Windows lesson markdown cache files:
%APPDATA%\Code\User\globalStorage\vs-publisher-473885.vscode-learn\content
- Windows VS Code global state DB (contains progress/achievements/history and cached catalog metadata):
%APPDATA%\Code\User\globalStorage\state.vscdb
