code-server

code-server is an open-source project that runs VS Code on a remote server and makes it accessible through a browser. The development environment lives on whatever machine you point it at, from a cheap VPS to a home server, and you connect to it from any browser, anywhere.

The practical advantage is that your editor, its extensions, its language servers, and your project files all live server-side. A tablet, a Chromebook, or a borrowed laptop becomes a fully capable development machine without installing anything locally. Compute-intensive tasks like compilation, test runs, and package downloads happen on the server rather than draining your laptop battery.

Because code-server uses the VS Code codebase directly, most VS Code extensions install and work as expected. The editing experience is effectively identical to the desktop app. You lose some integrations that rely on native desktop features, but the vast majority of day-to-day development workflows carry over unchanged.

The project is MIT-licensed with 77,000+ GitHub stars. Self-hosting requires a Linux machine with 1GB RAM and 2 vCPUs as a minimum. Installation via the automated script takes a few minutes. A managed multi-user version is available through Coder’s commercial platform for teams that want centralized provisioning, though code-server itself is entirely self-contained for individual use.