Inspiration
When starting a new project, whether personal or in industry, developers often lose valuable time setting up environments, configuring dependencies, and scaffolding starter files. We wanted to eliminate this “setup tax” and allow teams to jump directly into building. This motivated us to create Rocketize, a one-click project scaffolder built directly into VS Code.
What it does
Rocketize is a VS Code extension that generates fully functional starter projects with a single click. Users can select from frameworks like React, Django, Flask, FastAPI, and Node.js, and Rocketize automatically configures virtual environments, installs dependencies, and scaffolds starter files. The result is a production-ready workspace pre-configured with devcontainers, virtual environments, and starter boilerplate, ready for immediate development.
How we built it
Rocketize is powered by the VS Code Extension API. The UI is built as a TailwindCSS-powered webview inside VS Code, where users select a framework via interactive cards. These selections are passed back to the extension backend via VS Code’s messaging bridge.
On the backend, we used TypeScript and VS Code’s FileSystem API to scaffold files and manage configuration. We automated environment setup by executing shell commands directly through VS Code’s terminal API, including:
- Creating Python venvs or Node.js projects
- Running pip/npm installs for dependencies
- Copying framework-specific template files into the workspace
We also integrated Gemini AI to suggest starter configurations, generate scaffolding logic, and refine project setup flows during development.
Challenges we ran into
- Extension development learning curve: None of us had built a VS Code extension before, so we had to quickly learn the Extension API, Webview lifecycle, and message-passing between frontend and backend.
- Cross-platform support: Ensuring commands like Python venv creation worked across Windows, macOS, and Linux required multiple iterations.
- File system safety: We had to be careful to avoid overwriting user files, while still generating starter templates and environment configs.
- Hackathon constraints: Since we began implementing on Saturday, balancing experimentation with shipping a working MVP within the hackathon timeframe was a challenge.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Built a fully working VS Code extension from scratch in under 48 hours.
- Designed a clean and responsive UI with TailwindCSS inside VS Code’s webview.
- Automated complex workflows like venv creation, dependency installation, and devcontainer scaffolding.
- Created reusable framework cards (React, Flask, FastAPI, Django, Node.js) that can be extended for future languages.
What we learned
- Gained a deep understanding of the VS Code Extension API and how webviews interact with extension backends.
- Learned to integrate filesystem APIs for automated project scaffolding.
- Improved at team collaboration under time pressure, using GitHub to resolve merge conflicts and maintain velocity.
- Leveraged AI coding assistants (Gemini) not just for code snippets, but for reasoning about architecture and scaffolding flows.
What's next for Rocketize
- Expanding to more frameworks and languages (Go, Rust, Svelte, etc.)
- Adding AI-driven prompts so developers can describe a project in plain English and receive a fully scaffolded environment.
- Publishing Rocketize to the VS Code Marketplace, making it accessible to developers worldwide.
- Supporting custom templates so teams can share their own boilerplate setups within organizations.
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