Formatters

Format Document and Format on save (Settings > Editor) run a command line formatter over the file. Tori does not ship any formatter: it runs the one your project already uses, so what you see on save is what CI checks. Settings > Formatters has a card for each with its version and an on or off switch.

Supported formatters

Biome, oxfmt, Prettier, Black, Ruff and Vite+ run the project’s own copy, from the nearest node_modules/.bin, .venv/bin or venv/bin, else your PATH. StyLua, gofmt and shfmt come from your PATH. A formatter installed after Tori started shows up once you reopen Tori.

Languages with a language server but none of these (Rust, C and C++, and others) still get Format Document from the server, for example rustfmt through rust-analyzer. Format on save only runs the formatters above.

Which formatter a file gets

A project with no formatter config gets no formatter, unless you name one: formatting with a tool’s defaults puts a surprise diff in somebody’s pull request. Otherwise Tori asks, in order, and the first answer wins:

1. The project’s own pick, format.byExtension in <project>/.tori/settings.json.
2. A formatter config file in a folder between the file and the project root, nearest folder first.
3. Your pick, format.byExtension in ~/.config/tori/settings.json.
4. The language server’s formatting (Format Document only).

{ "format": { "byExtension": { "go": "gofmt", "sh": "shfmt", "py": "ruff" } } }

Keys are file extensions and values are formatter ids. gofmt, shfmt and Vite+ are only ever used this way, because no file in a repo says it formats with them.

When one folder has configs for several formatters, the one that names the file’s language goes first. A pyproject.toml with both [tool.black] and [tool.ruff] formats with Black, since a project set up that way usually lints with Ruff. A formatter that says “not my kind of file” hands it to the next one, so a .rs file in a repo with a .prettierrc still reaches rust-analyzer. A real failure, like a syntax error, stops and is shown.

If the picked formatter is not installed, Tori says so instead of skipping it, so a fresh clone before npm install does not look like a project that does not format.

Turning one off

The card’s switch writes format.disabled in ~/.config/tori/settings.json. A disabled formatter is skipped and the file goes on to the next one.

{ "format": { "disabled": ["biome"] } }

Adding a formatter

Any formatter that reads the file on stdin and writes the result to stdout can be added as a TOML file in ~/.config/tori/packs/formatters/, or from the catalog with Add a formatter. This one adds clang-format:

schema_version = 1
id = "clang-format"
label = "clang-format"
extensions = ["c", "h", "cc", "cpp", "hpp"]

[markers]
files = [".clang-format", "_clang-format"]

[launch]
kind = "path"
program = "clang-format"
args = ["--assume-filename={file}"]

{file} becomes the file’s path, which is how a formatter picks its parser and finds its settings. [markers] takes exact files, filename prefixes, or keys inside a JSON or TOML file ({ file = "pyproject.toml", key = "tool.black" }). Use kind = "project_bin" for a formatter the project installs itself. Restart Tori after adding the file.

A file may not reuse a built in formatter’s id. To keep Prettier to web files, copy it under a new id, add an extensions list, and switch the built in Prettier off on its card. A broken file is listed under Needs fixing in Settings > Formatters, and the built in keeps running.

Missing a formatter?

Request a formatter. Say which tool, the config file that marks a project as using it, and whether it can read from stdin.