Tinta for VS Code Desktop

Write Markdown-first interactive documents locally with controls, formulas, tables and seven chart types. This development extension targets language contract 1.0-draft.3, source format 1.0, and VS Code Desktop 1.141.0. No account, global CLI, external Node installation or network service is needed.

Install offline

Use Extensions: Install from VSIX… and choose the downloaded .vsix file, then reload VS Code. Alternatively, run code --install-extension /path/to/tinta.vsix. Supported desktop platforms are macOS arm64, Linux arm64 and Windows x64. Remote workspaces, containers, virtual filesystems and vscode.dev are unsupported.

If you switch from the local tinta-local.tinta extension to planta7.tinta, disable or uninstall the local extension before enabling the new one to avoid duplicate language providers. Keep your documents and check your settings after switching; settings are not migrated automatically.

Create a document

Create example.tinta, or select Tinta as the language of a new untitled editor. Insert:

# My document

@slider amount = 2 (min: 0, max: 10, step: 1, label: "Amount")
@calc doubled = amount * 2

Twice the amount is {{ doubled }}.

Type @ to complete a directive, or use completion inside an expression or option list. Hover over a name for help; use Go to Definition or Find All References for resolvable globals. Change amount in the expression to missing, run Tinta: Check, and inspect E_NAME_UNKNOWN in Problems. Restore amount to resolve the error.

Run Tinta: Open Preview and move the slider. Tinta: Reset Reading restores authored defaults. To add a chart, append:

@data readings
name: text | value: number
A | 2
B | 5
@end
@chart bar readings (x: "name", y: "value")

To enrich Markdown, open a .md file and run Tinta: Enrich Markdown. Review the diff and confirm a separate Tinta buffer. Markdown files never acquire Tinta behavior automatically.

Images, bundles and exports

For ![Photo](images/photo.png), run Tinta: Select Image Root and explicitly choose the directory containing images. Refresh changed images with Tinta: Refresh Images. Only validated local raster images are allowed; the workspace itself grants no access. Missing images are reported separately from source diagnostics.

Use Tinta: Open Source Bundle for .tinta.zip. It validates the archive and opens a new source buffer with images retained in memory; nothing is implicitly extracted. Tinta: Save Source Bundle saves source and local images. Ordinary text saves remain native VS Code operations.

Run Tinta: Export Interactive HTML or Tinta: Export Static HTML, choose authored initial or current reading answers, review the disclosure and choose a destination. Current answers require a matching valid preview. Exports include unsaved verified edits; source changes during export cancel the operation. Open the HTML directly in a browser with networking disabled. Interactive exports contain all source/data and hidden branches; static exports contain only the resolved visible presentation and required images. Neither needs this extension after export.

Features and limits

Diagnostics and recovery

Tinta: Check validates the active source immediately. Problems retain diagnostic codes and exact source locations. E_NAME_UNKNOWN means an unresolved name; E_NAME_DUPLICATE means a repeated declaration; E_ENCODING means invalid UTF-8; E_LIMIT means a bounded resource limit was reached. Asset failures, source-fidelity failures and host capacity are separate from language validity. A host failure shows an opaque incident identifier rather than authored text or a stack trace. Fix the source and check again; do not discard the buffer. A stalled worker is terminated and restarted. Avoid editing more than eight actively analyzed documents at once.

CLI and CI

The extension does not install a global CLI. In a repository with the separately provisioned Tinta CLI, use tinta check document.tinta --json for source diagnostics; see the CLI documentation for asset-check options and exit-code usage. With the source workspace and pinned toolchain, the equivalent is pnpm --filter @tinta-lang/cli exec tinta check document.tinta --json. CI should fail on the command's nonzero exit status. Never choose a workspace executable from authored document text.

The minimum and currently tested VS Code build are both 1.141.0, commit 2a59476c9bfcb90b3ddc372c36762471b7dfad1c. Later desktop versions require fresh compatibility testing. Language draft changes can narrow accepted input; preserve original source files and inspect diagnostics before exporting.