Detent Point
How to read this page
Most product roadmaps are marketing with dates attached. This page is plainer than that: it describes the actual state of the app. Solid today is what’s built and has tests behind it. Still cooking is what we know is missing or rough, listed here so you hear it from us before you hit it yourself. Direction is what we plan to build next. When anything here changes state, it shows up on the changelog.
Solid today
- The editor. Syntax-highlighted PowerShell 7 editing with completion (Ctrl+Space), code folding and regions, find and replace, go-to-line, snippets (Ctrl+J), and comment toggling (Ctrl+/).
- Live script analysis. The app parses your script as you type and flags problems in the editor margin, including warnings on destructive commands and version-compatibility notes. A Quick Fix command applies automated corrections.
- Run and debug. F5 runs the script, F8 runs the selection. Breakpoints (F9), step over / into / out (F10, F11, Shift+F11), continue, a call-stack panel, and a watch/locals panel.
- The console. An interactive PowerShell 7 console with command history recall, right under the script pane.
- Console color done right.
Get-ChildItemshows color and table headers come out green, while anything you capture or redirect comes back as clean text, exactly as stock pwsh does it. Copying from the console gives you plain text. - Windows PowerShell 5.1, live. File > New Windows PowerShell 5.1 Session opens a persistent, interactive 5.1 session in a tab beside your PowerShell 7 one, with its own console, streaming output, and durable state. The compatibility classifier can also route a whole script from a PowerShell 7 tab to 5.1 when it needs the older engine.
- Format / Indent. Shift+Alt+F reindents or fully formats through PSScriptAnalyzer’s own formatter. Two modes, and one of them is indentation-only, for people with brace opinions. See how it works →
- Testing built in. A Pester test-runner panel, plus one-click test generation and a coverage view through PesterForge Editor Edition, the in-editor slice of our PesterForge testing product. It comes free inside the app.
- Themes. Eight built-in themes: Light, Dark, Sage, Terminal Green, Classic Console, Amber Glow, High Contrast, and Sepia. Every chrome color pair is contrast-checked to WCAG AA by automated tests.
- Accessibility groundwork. Every theme is contrast-tested to WCAG AA — every color pair held to 4.5:1, no large-text exemption, regressions fail the build — and controls carry assistive-technology names, asserted by an automated scan runnable against any build.
- Help in three formats. F1 for the command under your caret, the bundled user guide in HTML Help or PDF from the Help menu, and the online docs — plus two hands-on tutorials for the test generator and the script hardening tool.
- The familiar shell. A full menu bar with the keyboard shortcuts your hands already know, Recent Files, a Show Command add-on for building cmdlet calls visually, and remote PowerShell tabs.
Honestly still cooking
These are the current limits of the app. If one of them is a dealbreaker for you today, we’d rather you know now than after you’ve installed.
- No remote debugging. Remote tabs open a session on another machine, but the debugger itself works locally only.
- Scripts routed to 5.1 return their output at the end. When the classifier routes a whole script from a PowerShell 7 tab to Windows PowerShell 5.1, the run happens out of process and the output arrives when it finishes, as serialized objects rather than live ones. For interactive 5.1 work, open a live 5.1 session tab instead — that one streams.
- Background jobs have one supported shape.
Start-Jobneeds a child process the in-process PowerShell 7 engine can’t spawn, so the app bundlesStart-ThreadJoband says so when you callStart-Job. Live 5.1 session tabs runStart-Jobnatively. - No custom colors yet. You pick from the eight built-in themes; an editor for your own colors and fonts is on the list for later.
- End-to-end assistive-technology use is not yet verified. The colors and control names are tested; a full working session under Narrator, Magnifier, or keyboard alone has not been proven end to end, and we don’t claim the Microsoft Store accessibility declaration until it is. If you rely on those tools, help us test and earn a license.
Getting it
DetentShell is in the Microsoft Store. The Store signs and delivers the package, the install is per-user with no elevation, and the uninstall is clean. Release notes land on the changelog.
Direction: intent, not commitments
These are the things we’ve actually decided to pursue. None of them carries a date:
- Deeper AI integration. An in-app AI assistant panel has been designed and parked until after v1; test generation itself stays deterministic by default either way.
- Source control in the editor. A git panel backed by GitEasy, our git tooling, is a candidate for a future release.
- Retiring the list above. The “still cooking” items are the near-term backlog. There is no secret second list.
If it ships, it’s on the changelog. Until then, don’t hold us to anything in this section.
Get DetentShell
PS> Start-Process "https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pdxw5ft80g0"
# Opens the Microsoft Store listingIn the Microsoft Store now. DetentShell is $49.99 in the Microsoft Store, with a free trial. Volume licensing for teams is handled separately.