vswhere is a command-line utility developed by Microsoft to locate installed instances of Visual Studio and related products (Build Tools, etc.). It queries the Visual Studio Setup Configuration API (ISetupConfiguration) and the Windows Registry to discover installation paths, versions, and workloads. The tool supports filtering by version range, product ID, workload requirements, and legacy installations. Output can be formatted as text, JSON, XML, or raw values, making it suitable for build scripts and deployment automation. The architecture consists of a core static library (vswhere.lib) containing the logic for parsing, querying, and formatting, linked against a minimal executable entry point (vswhere.exe). It relies on COM interfaces for setup configuration and standard C++17 libraries for string and filesystem operations.