Intellisense issue in vscode with typescript

I have a typescript project that I edit via VSCode.

I'm using parcel, which means I have to "import" images into code. By default, typescript doesn't like that, so I've added a declarations.d.ts file in my repository to allow these.

For some reason, VSCode only considers the declarations file when it's open in the editor. As soon as I close the file, these errors pop up again:

Cannot find module [...] or its corresponding type declarations ts(2307)

Here is a minimal reproductible example, as well as a screen recording of the issue

├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
└── src
    ├── assets
    │   └── image.png
    ├── declarations.d.ts
    ├── index.html
    └── main.ts

Stuff I tried

• restart typescript server
• quit and relaunch vscode
• reboot computer
• reset vscode settings
• update vscode
• clean reinstall vscode (including extensions and settigns)

Setup

• OS: Debian
• VScode: 1.83.1 x64, installed from .deb with apt
• Extensions: none

Just add this config file in your codebase as tsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "module": "commonjs",
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
    "target": "ES2020",
    "noImplicitAny": false,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "noUnusedParameters": true,
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "sourceMap": true,
    "outDir": "dist",
    "allowJs": true,
    "noEmit": false,
    "removeComments": true,
    "baseUrl": "src",
    "lib": ["ES6","DOM"]
  },
  "compileOnSave": false,
  "include": ["./src/**/*", "tests/*.ts"],
  "exclude": ["node_modules", "dist", "tests"]
}