Beancount for VS Code

VS Code extension that ships the Beancount language server for fast, accurate editing of Beancount journals. Bundles the binaries from the polarmutex/beancount-language-server project: https://github.com/polarmutex/beancount-language-server

What you get

• Completions for accounts, payees, dates, narration, tags, links, and transaction types
• Diagnostics powered by the beancount Python package
• Formatting aligned with bean-format options (prefix width, number width, currency column)
• Rename, references, and semantic highlighting

Requirements

• The extension needs a beancount-language-server executable. It ships bundled binaries for supported platforms.
• If the extension doesn't include a bundled binary for your platform, it searches in this order:
  1. beancountLangServer.serverPath (if configured)
  2. Global PATH
  3. Bundled binary (if available for your platform) If none is found, you need to install the server yourself.

Optional:

• The beancount Python package is only required for diagnostics.

pip install beancount

Install

1. Install from the VS Code Marketplace.
2. Open a Beancount file; the extension will start the bundled server binary for your platform.

Configure

Add the settings you need to settings.json:

{
  "beancountLangServer.journalFile": "/path/to/main.beancount",
  "beancountLangServer.formatting": {},
  // "beancountLangServer.serverPath": "/custom/path/to/beancount-language-server",
}

Key options:

• serverPath (optional): Use a custom server binary path instead of the bundled one (set if you want to run your own build)
• journalFile: Path to your primary Beancount journal (required for diagnostics)
• formatting.*: formatting related option, check https://github.com/polarmutex/beancount-language-server?tab=readme-ov-file#%EF%B8%8F-configuration for more details

Troubleshooting

• Make sure Python and the beancount package are available in the same environment VS Code uses.

• If diagnostics do not appear, ensure beancountLangServer.journalFile is set and run bean-check (or your configured command) in a VS Code terminal to confirm it works there.

• VSCode has some trouble supporting inlay-hints, you can disable it in settings:

{
  "[beancount]": {
    "editor.inlayHints.enabled": "off"
  }
}

Develop the extension

pnpm install
pnpm run build   # build the extension

Server development and contribution guidelines live in the repository root README.