VS Code Design Philosophy

This skill is the canonical VS Code design philosophy — the single source of truth for how we reason about UI, for both developers and agents.

As more and more of the UI is implemented via agents and tooling, the pixels increasingly take care of themselves, and the scarce, human part becomes the design judgment behind them.

This is about shifting left - talking about UI in design terms, not pixels, and having that conversation early. When something looks off, "this is 8px, should be 6px" fixes one number; "this surface is rounded at the wrong elevation tier" names the rule, so the fix lands everywhere and we catch it on a mockup or screenshot rather than in code review. The aim is to agree on what the UI should be and why, in language a designer and an engineer can share - the implementation (which token, which file) tends to follow once the design is settled.