Set up editor support

Goal: get syntax highlighting, diagnostics, hover, and go-to-definition in your editor.

VS Code

The vscode-bynk extension provides syntax highlighting plus live language features backed by the bynkc-lsp language server.

Install it from the Visual Studio Marketplace, or from a terminal:

code --install-extension bynk-lang.bynk-vscode

It uses the bynkc-lsp on your PATH, or downloads the matching release if there isn’t one.

To build both from source instead, for example to try unreleased changes:

1. Build the language server from the workspace root:

cargo build --release -p bynk-lsp

This produces target/release/bynkc-lsp. Put it on your PATH, or point the extension at it with the bynk.executablePath setting.

2. Build and install the extension from the vscode-bynk/ directory:

cd vscode-bynk
npm install
npm run package
code --install-extension bynk-vscode-*.vsix

The extension activates on .bynk files and on any workspace containing a bynk.toml. You then get syntax highlighting, live diagnostics, hover with type signatures, go-to-definition, and format-on-save (honouring editor.formatOnSave).

When a diagnostic’s code has a curated explanation, the lightbulb offers Explain <code>. It opens the explanation in a panel beside the editor, from the installed toolchain and without a network: the same text bynk explain <code> prints. Bynk: Explain Diagnostic Code… looks up any code, for example one from CI output.

Renaming or moving a .bynk file, or a folder of them, in the Explorer updates the unit names it declares and every uses/consumes that refers to them. VS Code shows the edit for review first. Moving units into a different project is left for you to fix by hand.

To serve the project while you edit, run Bynk: Start Dev Server from the Command Palette. It runs bynk dev in a terminal, and a status-bar item shows each context’s URL. The extension reference lists every command. If something is missing from your toolchain, Bynk: Doctor lists what and how to fix it.

For bynk.toml, install a TOML extension that reads JSON Schemas, such as Even Better TOML. The Bynk extension associates the manifest’s schema with every bynk.toml, so you get completion, hover and validation for its tables and keys (see Editor support in the manifest reference).

3. Find your way around the project. Open the Bynk view in the activity bar for a tree of the project’s contexts, commons, adapters, and tests. Expand a unit to see what it consumes, what consumes it, and its declarations, and click any node to jump to its source. A service handler’s inline buttons open its sequence diagram and wire contract, and an agent’s Show State lens opens its state machines — a diagram and a handler × state table generated from its handlers. These views, the documentation page, and the architecture map stay current as you save (see bynk.views.refresh).

In the browser

The same extension runs in vscode.dev and github.dev with nothing to install: press . on a Bynk repository on GitHub. In the browser the language features come from the Bynk compiler built to WebAssembly rather than from bynkc-lsp: syntax highlighting, diagnostics, hover and completion. A folder with a bynk.toml is analysed as a whole project, and the status bar reads Bynk (web). A file outside any project is analysed on its own (Bynk (web, single-file)), and errors about names from other units are hidden there. Tests, debugging, the dev server, deploy, Doctor, tasks, scaffolding, the Bynk sidebar and the project views are desktop-only.

Settings

Setting	Default	Purpose
bynk.executablePath	bynkc-lsp	Path to the language-server binary.
bynk.trace.server	off	Trace LSP traffic (off / messages / verbose) in the “Bynk LSP” output channel.
bynk.views.refresh	onSave	When the project sidebar and open model views refresh: onSave, onType, or manual.

Other editors

Any editor with a generic LSP client can use bynkc-lsp. Syntax highlighting is also available through the tree-sitter-bynk grammar. A TOML language server that reads JSON Schemas (taplo, in Zed, Helix and others) checks bynk.toml once the file names the schema; see Editor support.

Related

• Format your code with bynk-fmt.
• Reference: bynk-lsp.