Why can't this be an extension? I love the idea and can perfectly imagine this inside a tab of the editor area. This would allow for multiple haystack tabs as well, so switching contexts would be seven easier.
Having to install another IDE (even if it is based on vscode) is a bit of a bummer for me. None the less, keep it up!
VS Code extensions are pretty limited - you can override the renderer for an editor tab, but if you want multiple things within a custom interface to be treated as first-class editor tabs by the larger environment (and by the larger extension ecosystem), that's not really possible. Forks are a reasonable step as long as they don't fall behind!
Do you really need a first-class-editor for working directly from the canvas? Wouldn't it be enough to use the canvas just for navigation and show a rendered picture of the code, but open a separate editor (maybe side by side?) for the real work?
My understanding is that Haystack's mission is to explore this design space more fully than others have before, so I think they're making the right decision to be audacious here!
I understand the frustration here! As the other commenter noted, it's quite bit tougher to make Haystack as good in the form of an extension, but we do plan to eventually explore this path!
Since extensions are limited, a nice workaround imo would be to be able to turn canvas view on/off. I'm going to want to go between the canvas and the standard VSCode view, and so if I can do that within Haystack I don't need to have both installed.
