Gitpod is all about provisioning and orchestrating ephemeral developer environments (think about it as a resource efficient and powerful orchestration platform for your dev envs).An IDE is just one building block of a working cloud based developer environment, in addition to the operating system, databases, compilers and all the other tools you need to be productive. At Gitpod we want to support the IDE or editor you like best, and providing VS Code through the web browser is just one possibility. Alternatively, you can access your Gitpod workspaces through SSH, local VS Code and soon your favorite Jetbrains IDEs.
If you have a machine somewhere which you would like to access with VS Code through a browser, check out OpenVSCode Server. If you need control over your infrastructure and would like the orchestration capabilities that Gitpod offer you can self host Gitpod.
