Here’s a quick rundown of the process: Visit the official Python website. Navigate to the ‘Downloads’ section. Select your ...

Official support for free-threaded Python, and free-threaded improvements Python’s free-threaded build promises true parallelism for threads in Python programs by removing the Global Interpreter Lock ...

This happens even with minimal code that does not use json, re, or any APIs—looks like the interpreter receives a Message object where a plain string is expected (possibly before user code runs).

It would be great if when you choose the python interpreter via the extension the local settings.json file is updated in the .vscode directory. I think it is currently stored in AppData somewhere.