Markdown Injections

Grammar	What it highlights
`markdown.arrow`	Arrow operators (`->`, `<-`, `-->`, `<--`)
`markdown.bracket`	Parenthesized expressions `(...)`, supports bold/italic/highlight inside
`markdown.colon`	Colon-terminated labels and key-value patterns
`markdown.comment`	Lines starting with `;` or `//`
`markdown.highlight`	`==highlighted==` and `__underlined__` text

All markdown injections exclude meta.embedded and markup.fenced_code scopes to avoid interfering with syntax-highlighted code blocks.

Indented Fenced Code Block Fix

Fenced code blocks inside list items lose syntax highlighting for bash/sh/zsh, dockerfile, makefile, diff. The markdown grammar's list handling consumes leading whitespace, so language grammars anchored to ^ fail. markdown.fenced_fix adds \G alongside ^ in critical patterns.

Upstream: vscode#194998 (closed without fix, VSCode considers it a per-language-grammar problem)

Fenced Code Block Coloring

Unlabeled ``` blocks can be colored via settings. The 3-segment markup.fenced_code selector is intentional: language-specific scopes (4+ segments) override it for yml, bash, etc.

{
  "scope": "markup.fenced_code",
  "settings": { "foreground": "#CE9178" }
},
{
  "scope": "markup.fenced_code punctuation.definition.markdown",
  "settings": { "foreground": "#d4d4d4" }
},
{
  "scope": "fenced_code.block.language",
  "settings": { "foreground": "#d4d4d4" }
}

Shell Comment Coloring

# comment lines inside fenced bash/sh/zsh blocks are colored green (#6A9955) via programmatic decoration. This works around a VS Code limitation where the TextMate begin pattern (^|\G)(\s*)(.*) consumes the first content line before source.shell can tokenize it.

Table Decorations

Pipe-delimited markdown tables get visual styling in the editor:

Header row: bold + bottom border
Separator row: faded to near-invisible
Data rows: bottom border
Pipe characters: dimmed

Works with both indented and non-indented tables. Requires header + separator + at least one data row.

Terraform HCL Injection

Grammar	What it highlights
`yaml.heredoc.hcl`	YAML syntax inside `<<YAML` / `<<-YAML` heredoc blocks

Requires disabling semantic highlighting for TextMate grammars to take effect:

{
  "[terraform]": {
    "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": false
  }
}

Customizing Colors

Add editor.tokenColorCustomizations to your settings.json:

{
  "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
    "textMateRules": [
      { "scope": "markdown.highlight", "settings": { "foreground": "#f7f42e" } },
      { "scope": "markdown.comment", "settings": { "foreground": "#57A64A" } },
      { "scope": "markdown.colon", "settings": { "foreground": "#9CDCFE" } },
      { "scope": "markdown.bracket", "settings": { "foreground": "#ceba78" } },
      { "scope": "markdown.arrow", "settings": { "foreground": "#97ff42", "fontStyle": "bold" } }
    ]
  }
}

Known Limitations

Unlabeled ``` block coloring requires settings rules (above) since VSCode textMateRules don't support scope subtraction
Bold/italic/highlight work inside brackets, but other inline patterns (links, images) may not
Indented fenced block fix does not cover makefile ifeq/ifdef/define/endif blocks