Black IDE

A custom, telemetry-free distribution of VS Code featuring a built-in AI coding assistant and agentic loop engine.

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⚠️ Project Status: Hobby & Experimental Black IDE is a personal hobby project created for learning, experimentation, and custom developer workflows. It is not an official product, and is not actively maintained or supported for production use.

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💡 About Black IDE

Black IDE is built on top of the open-source codebases of VS Code and the build environment of VSCodium. The main objective of this project is to integrate a native, built-in AI agent directly into a clean, telemetry-free IDE environment.

Key Customizations & Features

1. Integrated AI Agent (black-ide-agent):

   • Features a built-in AI coding assistant and agentic loop engine that lives directly in the IDE activity bar (Black IDE Chat).
   • A dedicated companion webview to interact with local agent models.

2. Telemetry-Free by Default:

   • All built-in tracking, telemetry, and reporting endpoints are completely patched out of the codebase, ensuring maximum privacy.

3. Custom UI & UX Branding:

   • Customized UI components, fonts, EOL banners, and clean branding files.

4. Security Hardening:

   • Added command filter capabilities and security updates to block malicious extensions.

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❤️ Special Thanks & Acknowledgements

This project would not be possible without the incredible work of the open-source community:

• VSCodium: A massive thank you to the VSCodium project and its contributors. This project relies heavily on the excellent build scripts, telemetry-removal patches, and community configuration files maintained by the VSCodium team.
• Microsoft VS Code: For creating a powerful, extensible, and open-source editor framework.
• Open VSX Registry: For providing a community-driven, open-source alternative to the proprietary extension marketplace.

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🛠️ Repository Structure

• patches/: Custom patches applied during build (telemetry removal, font adjustments, branding, etc.).
• src/: Extension code (such as the black-ide-agent) and resources.
• scripts/: Automation scripts for building, preparing, and packaging the IDE.
• vscode/: Submodule/repository for upstream VS Code source (cloned during build).

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🚀 Building Locally

You can build Black IDE from source for macOS, Linux, or Windows.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the following installed on your machine:

• Node.js (check version requirements in .nvmrc)
• npm
• Git

Common Make Commands

The repository provides a Makefile and a justfile for easy build management:

• Initialize & Dev Build:

  make dev

  This clones the upstream vscode repository, applies patches, and sets up your developer environment.

• Build macOS Binary:

  make build-mac

• Build Linux Binary:

  make build-linux

• Build Windows Binary:

  make build-windows

• Clean Build Artifacts:

  make clean

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🔌 Extensions & Marketplace

In compliance with the Visual Studio Marketplace Terms of Use, Black IDE uses the Open VSX Registry as its default extension provider.

Note: Some proprietary Microsoft extensions (such as official C# debugger tools or Live Share) may have license restrictions that prevent them from running on non-Microsoft builds. Check the documentation for compatibility and workarounds.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.