diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 7a2248f5a02..6d60da7790c 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -31,6 +31,8 @@ Here are a few things you can do that will increase the likelihood of your pull
 
 Make sure you have installed recent versions of vscode (>= v1.52), node (>=12.16), and npm (>= 7.5.2). Earlier versions will probably work, but we no longer test against them.
 
+To automatically switch to the correct version of node, we recommend using nvm which will pick-up the node version from `.nvmrc`.
+
 ### Installing all packages
 
 From the command line, go to the directory `extensions/ql-vscode` and run
diff --git a/extensions/ql-vscode/.nvmrc b/extensions/ql-vscode/.nvmrc
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..ff650592a1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/extensions/ql-vscode/.nvmrc
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+v16.13.0