IPCraft for VS Code
Design reusable FPGA IP without hand-writing every register, HDL wrapper, or
vendor integration file. IPCraft turns a compact YAML specification into a
visual, repeatable workflow for editing, generating, checking, and building IP
cores from inside VS Code.
See IPCraft in action
Prefer full quality? Watch the demo video directly.
Why IPCraft?
- Integrate IP with less vendor-specific work — describe an IP core once,
then generate the packaging needed by Intel/Altera Platform Designer
(
*_hw.tcl) and AMD Vivado (component.xml). You can target both toolchains
without maintaining two independent component descriptions by hand.
- Build register maps visually — add, edit, reorder, and inspect address
blocks, registers, register arrays, and bit fields in a table editor and
bit-field visualizer. IPCraft recalculates layout after structural changes,
making memory-map iteration much faster and less error-prone than editing
offsets and bit ranges manually.
- Keep one source of truth — use
.ip.yml and .mm.yml specifications to
drive HDL, register files, testbenches, documentation, and vendor project
files. Regeneration is repeatable, while consistency checks reveal when the
specification, top-level HDL, and generated integration files have drifted
apart.
- Start from a scaffold, not boilerplate — generate a complete VHDL or
SystemVerilog project with the top level, bus wrapper, register logic,
user-logic skeleton, testbench, and tool-specific project files already
connected.
- Move existing IP into the same workflow — import a VHDL entity, Platform
Designer component, or Vivado IP package instead of recreating its interfaces
from scratch.
- Shorten the edit-to-build loop — validate designs while editing, launch
headless Vivado or Quartus builds from VS Code, and review timing,
utilization, and CDC results without switching between disconnected tools.
- Debug register values faster — decode raw literals and captured CSV data
against the register map, then transform and combine values visually to
investigate hardware behavior without repeatedly calculating fields by hand.
- Reuse common and custom interfaces — work with built-in AXI, Avalon, and
streaming bus definitions, or describe project-specific conduit interfaces
once and reuse them across cores.
Screenshots
| IP Core Editor |
Memory Map Editor |
Data Inspector |
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Generated from the real editor UI by npm run docs:screenshots — see Automated Docs Screenshots.
Features
- Visual Editors — compose interfaces, ports, parameters, clocks, and resets
on a block-diagram IP Core canvas; create and rearrange address blocks,
registers, arrays, and bit fields in the Memory Map editor. Both editors sync
changes to readable YAML while preserving comments and numeric formatting
(Create Your First IP Core,
Memory-Mapped Registers)
- Data Inspector — decode literals and captured CSV data against registers, then transform and combine values in a visual workspace (guide)
- Custom Interfaces — define conduit (custom) bus interfaces with user-named signals, stored as reusable
.busdef.yml files (guide)
- Consistency Check — cross-references a spec against the generated top-level HDL and vendor artifacts (
component.xml, _hw.tcl), flagging drift in either direction (guide)
- HDL and Vendor Generation — scaffolds a full RTL project (package, top entity, user-logic skeleton, bus wrapper, register file, testbench) in VHDL or SystemVerilog, plus Vivado
component.xml, Platform Designer *_hw.tcl, and vendor project files (guide)
- Headless Build — runs Vivado or Quartus in batch mode from inside VS Code, with a Build Reports sidebar panel (timing, utilization, CDC) and status bar summary; Docker runner supported (guide)
- Import — reverse-engineer an existing VHDL entity, Platform Designer
_hw.tcl, or Vivado component.xml into an .ip.yml spec (guide)
See Commands & Settings for the full command list and every setting's default and description, and Keyboard Shortcuts for canvas/table navigation.
IPCraft supports VS Code Restricted Mode with limited functionality. Visual
editing and read-only inspection remain available, while generation, template
rendering, imports that invoke Git, builds, vendor scans, and FPGA tool launches
require a trusted workspace. See
Workspace Trust and Restricted Mode
for the complete behavior.
Quick Start
Requires VS Code 1.80 or later.
IPCraft: New IP Core (or New IP Core + Register Map) from the Command Palette- Design the core on the visual canvas
IPCraft: Scaffold Project to generate RTL, testbench, and vendor filesIPCraft: Build to run a headless Vivado/Quartus compile
Walkthroughs covering these steps (and importing existing VHDL, importing from vendor tools, and synthesizing) are available from Help → Get Started or IPCraft: Open Walkthrough....
Installing the Marketplace extension does not add a shell command to your
PATH. A separate npm CLI package is being prepared for headless CI and
scripting; until it is published, use the extension commands above. See the
Generator Reference for
local package testing.
Documentation
Full documentation — commands, settings, keyboard shortcuts, generator internals, schemas, tutorials — is in the docs/ directory, built with MkDocs:
pip install mkdocs mkdocs-material
mkdocs serve
Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000.
Development
ipcraft-spec (bus definitions and JSON schemas) is a git submodule — clone with --recurse-submodules, or run git submodule update --init --recursive after a plain clone.
npm install
npm run compile
Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host.
npm run watch # watch mode
npm run test:unit # unit tests
npm run lint # ESLint (zero warnings)
npm run type-check # TypeScript check
See Development Setup for the full contributor workflow, and CONTRIBUTING.md for the setup, lint/type-check/test, and PR checklist.
License
MIT
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