0003. No @vscode-elements/elements

Status: Accepted (2026-09-30)

Context

@vscode/webview-ui-toolkit was deprecated on 6 January 2025 with no official successor. @vscode-elements/elements, at v2.5.1, is the community alternative. It is alive, and built on Lit with shadow-DOM components. Deckard styles its pages with its own eight themes and high-contrast sheets, applied as document-level CSS over --vscode-* variables.

Decision

Deckard does not adopt @vscode-elements/elements. Its controls stay plain HTML, rendered by Preact into the light DOM and styled by Deckard’s own CSS.

Consequences

• The themes keep reaching every control, since no shadow root stands between them.
• The layout, contrast, and visual tests keep working, and so do jsdom tests, which cannot handle adoptedStyleSheets.
• No second shipped package arrives with the controls.
• Deckard keeps writing its own controls, as it does today.

Alternatives considered

• Adopt the library for its ready-made controls. Rejected because shadow-DOM components work against Deckard’s own themes. Microsoft’s stated position after the toolkit is plain HTML styled with --vscode-* variables, which Deckard already does.