Language tooling

The editor gets its language smarts from four kinds of tool, each with its own page and its own pane under Settings > Languages:

• Language servers: completion, hover, go to definition, rename and the compiler’s diagnostics. Settings > LSP.
• Linters: extra diagnostics and quick fixes from ESLint, Biome, oxlint or Ruff, beside the language server. Settings > Linters.
• Formatters: Format Document and format on save. Settings > Formatters.
• Debuggers: breakpoints, stepping and variables on F5. Settings > Debuggers.

A language with none of these still opens, highlights, edits and saves. It just gets no language intelligence.

By language

Around 30 more languages have a language server and nothing else yet (Ruby, Java, PHP, Swift, Kotlin, Elixir, Zig, Markdown, TOML and others). The language servers page lists every one with its install step.

How a tool gets onto your machine

Every tool comes one of four ways, and its card in Settings says which:

• Bundled. Ships inside Tori and works with no install step. Needs node on your PATH for the ones written in JavaScript.
• Installed by Tori. Install on the card (or on the banner over a file that wants it) fetches a pinned version from npm, a GitHub release or PyPI, checks it, and keeps it under ~/.config/tori/. Update and Remove sit on the same card.
• Your toolchain. Tools that a language’s own toolchain manages (gopls, rust-analyzer, Delve). The card shows the command, and Install runs it for you in a terminal inside Settings.
• Your project. Linters and most formatters run the copy in the project’s node_modules/.bin, .venv or venv, so they match the version CI uses. Add them to the project’s dev dependencies as usual.

Tools are looked up on your login shell’s PATH, not the stripped down one a Finder launched app gets, so anything installed through Homebrew, mise, asdf, nvm or rustup is found. A copy of your own always wins over one Tori installed.

Trusted projects

Most of these tools run code from the project: TypeScript loads the workspace’s own compiler and plugins, rust-analyzer runs build scripts, and a debugger runs your program. They only start in a project you have trusted. The first time one is held back, Tori offers to trust the project. A project’s project settings trusts or revokes it, and Settings > Projects lists trusted projects, each with Revoke. The list lives in ~/.config/tori/trusted.json, outside any repo, so a repo cannot trust itself. An untrusted project still edits normally, with the JSON and YAML servers (which run nothing from the project) still working.

Turning one off

Every card has a switch, which writes to ~/.config/tori/settings.json. Language servers and linters can also be turned off for one project, in <project>/.tori/settings.json. That list only adds to yours, so a repo can never switch back on something you turned off.

{ "lsp": { "disabled": ["eslint"] } }

Adding your own

Every server, linter, formatter and debugger is a pack: a TOML file, not code. Install one from its page in the catalog, which Browse packs in each Settings pane opens, or let Tori offer it when a file, F5 or Format needs it. Or drop one into ~/.config/tori/packs/lsp/, ~/.config/tori/packs/formatters/ or ~/.config/tori/packs/dap/ and restart Tori. A file may not reuse a built in id: to change a built in, copy it under a new id and switch the built in off. A broken file is listed under Needs fixing in its pane, and whatever it would have replaced keeps running. Each page below has a complete example you can copy, and Custom packs on your machine has the rules.

Asking for a tool

If a language, linter, formatter or debugger you use is missing, open a request on GitHub. Each link opens an issue with the questions already in it:

• Request a language server
• Request a linter
• Request a formatter
• Request a debugger

The most useful things to include are a link to the tool, how you install it today, and the config file that marks a project as using it. If you already wrote a TOML that works, paste it: a working file is the fastest way to get a tool bundled for everyone.