Supported Task Types

Workspace Tasks automatically discovers and organizes tasks from 25+ file types and build systems.

Overview
Task Discovery Notes
1. Performance: Task Discovery Depth
Enabling / Disabling Task Types
Next Steps

Overview

Category	Description
Package Managers & Build Tools	npm, Yarn, pnpm, Bun, Composer, Pipenv, Poetry, Ant, Maven, Gradle, MSBuild
Task Runners	Gulp, Grunt, Cargo, cargo-make, Just, Make, mise, Cake Build
DevOps & Containers	Docker, Docker Compose, GitHub Actions
Scripts & Other	Shell scripts, Python, Jupyter Notebooks, VS Code Tasks, Workspace Tasks
GitHub Actions Integration	Run GitHub Actions workflows locally with act

Task Discovery Notes

The extension discovers tasks regardless of whether tools are installed. Execution requires the respective tool to be available in your PATH.

All patterns respect .gitignore and .tasksignore exclusions
The following patterns are always ignored:
- **/node_modules/**
- **/.git/**
- **/.vscode-test/**
- **/__pycache__/**

Performance: Task Discovery Depth

Control how deep the extension searches for tasks using the workspaceTasks.taskDiscovery.fetchDepth setting:

{
  "workspaceTasks.taskDiscovery.fetchDepth": 3
}

Depth is measured from the workspace folder root:

workspace-folder/          (depth 0)
├── package.json           ✅ depth 0
└── src/                   (depth 1)
    ├── Makefile           ✅ depth 1
    └── components/        (depth 2)
        └── package.json   ✅ depth 2 (if fetchDepth >= 2)

null (default) — Full recursive search
Positive integer — Limits search to that depth

Enabling / Disabling Task Types

Use workspaceTasks.enabledTaskTypes in your settings.json to control which task types are active:

{
  "workspaceTasks.enabledTaskTypes": {
    "npm": true,
    "gulp": true,
    "grunt": false,
    "ant": false,
    "gradle": false
  }
}

See the Configuration Reference for the full list of available task type keys.

Next Steps

Configuration Reference — Full settings reference including task type toggles
Task Filtering — Exclude specific files from task discovery
GitHub Actions Integration — Run workflows locally with act
Custom Workspace Tasks — Define your own task templates