It does support a cloud-based sync tied to either your GitHub account and/or Microsoft account.

If you prefer a more traditional git-based dotfiles sync, github.dev and GitHub Code Spaces will also look for a public or private repo under your account called dotfiles.

I don't think vscode.dev has a way to provide a dotfiles repo, though, and I think it only supports the cloud sync. (vscode.dev is the other web hosted VS Code like github.dev but for other generic things like its Theme Playground and a subset of github.dev functionality for Azure Repos missing things like PR review support because there is no equivalent extension to GitHub Issues and Pull Requests for Azure Repos.)

So what you're suggesting is vendor lock-in to solve my goal of consistency independent of context? What about Gitlab, Slack, mailing-lists? And the killer feature for losing that is ligature support?

I do have dotfiles repo but no VSCode stuff there, and no Microsoft account, might explain why I never got past the "setting up your web editor" screen when I tried the '.' shortcut.

I'm not suggesting vendor lock-in is necessary which is exactly why I mentioned there were multiple ways to do that. I think it is great to have options.

It was also just one example I knew of where code review tools were getting more respectful of user preferences. I stated pretty plainly that I wish a lot more tools were doing that beyond the examples that I knew. I'd love to see more font options in code review tools.

I don't know about Gitlab and the last I used Slack I had wished it had font options because I hated whatever fonts they chose that they thought aligned best with their brand. Mailing lists are actually an easy answer: use a mail client that happily lets you switch an email's fonts. (I used to do that when reading code in mailing lists in Thunderbird to switch from the default proportional fonts of email to a monotype font and back. I assume Thunderbird still has features like that, but it has been forever since I've personally been on a mailing list involving code reviewing.)

Of course I realize I can change the font? We can do pretty much anything we want if we put the energy in it. I already do in my WM, terminal, vim, mutt and everything else on desktop. If I really wanted to I could replace the font in code and pre block as well with just a few lines of css in a user script, but ligatures is not the feature that will make me do it. Maybe to remove them, that would be an idea if they become mainstream.

You're missing my point, I don't want to have to set a special font for everything I use. Simplicity and minimalism is my way. Not VSCode + Microsoft account + github.dev, I have no use for either. I could do it in my current tools, until a client uses something else, and I would have to set it up again. Or maybe I'm in a VM, not logged into github.com and reading some repository.