Presently it looks like just installing the core is enough for the cloud platform.
python3 -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/platformio/platformio/develop/scripts/get-platformio.py)"
The two files needed to install the vscode extension seem to just mess things up. Once again that is probably more to do with Gitpod than anything with platformIO
The core works fine and does all that I want it to do.
“Except this nagging little pio remote run t-upload t-nobuild thing I have been trying to understand/hoping will work soon”