Fix broken .vsix packaging: ship native deps + platform-specific builds

[KirtiJha]

The bug

The extension is esbuild-bundled, with native modules (@lancedb/lancedb, apache-arrow) marked external because they can't be inlined into the JS bundle. But .vscodeignore blanket-excluded node_modules, so a packaged .vsix shipped zero dependency files — the vector-store native binary was simply missing, and the extension would fail on install. It only ever worked when run from source (where node_modules is on disk).

Proven before the fix with vsce ls:

total files: 18
node_modules files: 0   ← @lancedb/lancedb, apache-arrow, SDKs all missing

This predates the embedding work — it affects the core vector store today.

The fix

1. Reclassify dependencies by the bundling rule. A package belongs in dependencies (and must ship) iff it's in the esbuild --external list; everything esbuild bundles into dist/ moves to devDependencies. Verified against the actual built bundle — externals appear as runtime require()s, bundled deps don't:

@lancedb/lancedb: 1   @anthropic-ai/sdk: 1   @google/generative-ai: 1   (present → ship)
diff/minimatch/openai/sql.js/ulid/zod/react/react-dom: 0   (bundled → devDeps)

2. .vscodeignore stops blanket-ignoring node_modules (vsce already includes only dependencies), trims dependency cruft (*.ts/*.map/*.md, test/docs dirs), and drops dev-only files (.vscode, scripts, .github).

3. Platform-specific packaging. Each native binary is ~74 MB, so one universal .vsix would be ~370 MB. Added scripts/package-target.mjs (npm run package:target) and a Release workflow that builds one .vsix per target (linux x64/arm64, darwin x64/arm64, win32 x64), cross-fetching the correct native package on each runner.

4. CI guard. The build now fails if the @lancedb native binary ever falls out of the package again.

5. Cleanup. Removed a stale --external:vectordb flag; added @vscode/vsce as a devDependency; documented the packaging model in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Verified end-to-end (locally)

• vsce ls after the fix: ships @lancedb/lancedb + platform binary + apache-arrow + SDK closure; excludes react/diff/openai.
• Actually built code-historian-linux-x64-1.0.0.vsix (28 MB) and confirmed lancedb.linux-x64-gnu.node and dist/extension.js are inside it.
• npm ci lockfile in sync, with all 5 platform packages present for cross-builds.
• ✅ Typecheck, lint (0 errors), 46 tests, full build.

Note

This is independent of PR #3 (neural embeddings) and fixes the more urgent, already-merged @lancedb/lancedb case. Because the fix is general (ship the dependencies closure), when PR #3 merges its @xenova/transformers/onnxruntime-node optional deps are handled automatically — though onnxruntime ships all-platform binaries in one package, so a follow-up .vscodeignore trim per target would further shrink those builds.

https://claude.ai/code/session_014bNJaULcYHnDkqUP6HcemQ

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