dsh-plugin-coop-with-vs/protocol/README.md

Open-file snapshot protocol v1

IDE companions publish one JSON file per running IDE instance in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Prophet\dsh-plugin-coop-with-vs\v1\instances

The schema is open-files-v1.schema.json.

Publishing rules

• File name: vscode-<instanceId>.json or visualstudio-<instanceId>.json.
• Write a temporary file in the same directory, then atomically replace/rename it.
• Refresh updatedAt at least every 15 seconds, even when tabs do not change.
• Delete the instance file on clean shutdown. Consumers expire snapshots older than 60 seconds because shutdown cleanup is best effort.
• Publish only absolute paths for local, disk-backed files. Do not publish source text, credentials, virtual documents, or untitled buffers.
• Deduplicate paths case-insensitively on Windows.
• dirty: true means the IDE buffer may differ from the on-disk file. DSH still reads the on-disk version unless a future protocol explicitly adds buffer transfer.

Compatibility

Consumers reject unknown versions and malformed entries without rejecting healthy snapshots from other instances. Adding fields requires a new protocol version because v1 intentionally rejects additional properties.