What is codetour?

CodeTour is an extension for Visual Studio Code, the popular code editor, that lets you create and play back guided walkthroughs of a codebase. Think of it as a narrated tour where each stop is a specific file and line of code, with a written explanation attached. Someone new to a project can follow the tour step by step, reading annotations that explain what each piece of code does and why it matters, without needing to ask a colleague or dig through a contributing guide. Creating a tour is done entirely inside the editor. You click a record button, then open files and click on the lines you want to annotate. You type a description for each stop, which can include formatted text. When you are finished, you stop the recording. The tour is saved as a JSON file that can be checked into the repository alongside the code, so every contributor who clones the project has access to the same guided walk. Tours can be structured in sequences. If you prefix tour names with numbers, the extension automatically links them so readers move from one tour to the next in order. You can also mark one tour as the primary tour, and the extension will offer to start it automatically when someone opens the project for the first time. Beyond onboarding, the extension is useful for explaining a bug report by walking through the relevant code, or for giving context on a pull request so reviewers understand the reasoning behind changes. Tours can be exported to a standalone file and shared with anyone, even without cloning the repository. The extension supports embedding shell commands as tour steps, so a tour can include runnable instructions alongside explanations. Tours are stored as plain text files, which means they work with version control and can be updated through normal code review processes. The full README is longer than what was shown.