In 2021, the code-server project made significant improvements including increased test coverage from 46.86% to 66%, addition of end-to-end testing with Playwright, launching deploy-code-server repo for one-click cloud deployment, rewriting VS Code integration to rely more on upstream changes, and engaging more with the community through updates and discussions. The project also gained over 13,000 new GitHub stars and had around 215 merged PRs from community members.