Visual Studio Code extension name requirements

2025/08/03

A Microsoft engineer explains,

Extension names may only contain A through Z, a through z, 0 through 9 and -. The extension name must start with an alphabetic or numeric character.

Publisher names have the same validation rules.

There’s no record of where the inner quote came from.

(Clarification: the name is distinct from the “display name,” which is shown in most places.)

The Visual Studio Code Extension Manager checks these requirements with this regular expression:

const nameRegex = /^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]*$/i;

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