Yinz Language Extension for VSCode

Syntax highlighting, inline diagnostics, autocomplete, and hover docs for .ynz files.

What's new in v0.3.0

Channels — channel<T>() bounded task communication is live. Construction diagnostics (missing element type, non-positive capacity, wrong capacity type) and the send/receive method surface (wrong element type, statement-position, named-binding receiver) all render inline with WHAT/WHAT-INSTEAD/WHY teaching text.
64 default-capacity hint — channel<int>() with empty parens shows a muted 64 inside the parens (the locked default capacity). Hover explains the bounded-by-construction model; click writes 64 into your source.
Background handle-form — let h = background worker(commands) yields a handle; h.send(v) feeds the spawned function's first channel<T> parameter, h.receive() delivers messages or the task's completion value (typed errors). Misuse (no channel parameter, non-suspending callee) gets teaching errors.
Backpressure teaching — send-related diagnostics explain that a suspended producer is backpressure working correctly, not a deadlock.
Two new Tier 3 lints — cross-thread-fields-not-padded (a shape crossing a background boundary that can't get cache-line padding) and prefer-yielding-sleep (sleepBlocking(ms) in a non-kernel program). Both dismissable suggestions; hover the squiggle for the rule's WHAT/WHAT-INSTEAD/WHY.

What's new in v0.3.0-m8

Mixed CPU+I/O parallel-group hints — a group can now MIX a number-crunching call and a waiting (I/O) call side by side; the compiler runs them at the same time through one shared continuation instead of the group declining to plain sequential order. Each member's muted comment is tagged per its OWN kind — only the crunching call says — separate core; the waiting call's comment omits it, since it overlaps on the event loop instead of a second core. Hover either one for the updated WHAT/WHAT-INSTEAD/WHY, which now explains that a group can mix both kinds of member and still overlap together.

What's new in v0.3.0-m7

CPU parallel-group hints — when the compiler auto-runs independent number-crunching calls on separate cores, every call in the group shows a muted comment: // runs at the same time as line 12 — separate core. The hint appears for both CPU groups (M3d) and I/O-overlap groups (M3b), letting you see the compiler's full scheduling decision at a glance. No source change required — the hint is informational only.
wait ordering-barrier explanation — the warning for wait on a CPU-bound callee now explains that wait defeats parallelization by acting as an ordering barrier, not just that the wait has no effect.

What's new in v0.3.0-m2

wait actually suspends — wait foo() now suspends the calling function at a real state-machine boundary; the OS thread is freed for other tasks during the pause. Hover over wait to see the updated docs.
sleepAsync(ms) intrinsic — non-blocking sleep. wait sleepAsync(100) suspends for 100ms without tying up a thread. Pairs with sleepMs(ms) (blocking, M1).
New warnings — wait on a CPU-bound call (wait print(...)) shows a Tier 3 warning; sleepAsync(...) without wait shows a Tier 3 warning; state-machine-to-state-machine calls without wait show a guidance warning.
background routing distinction — hover over background to see which thread pool the call targets (I/O pool for functions with wait, blocking pool for others).

What's new in v0.3.0-m1

background actually runs on a separate thread — background fn(args) now spawns on a background thread-pool runtime; main continues immediately. Hover over background to see the updated docs.
New safety errors — background fn(lend-param) rejects mutable borrows across thread boundaries; background/wait in --kernel mode produce teaching errors.
Inline .give hint — when background fn(largeStruct.copy()) copies more than 64 bytes, an inline muted hint suggests .give (transfers ownership; no copy).
sleepMs(ms) intrinsic — synchronous thread sleep for demos and timing tests.

What's new in v0.2.0

Go-to-definition — Cmd+click any identifier to jump to its declaration (same file or cross-file)
Find All References — right-click → "Find All References" lists every use-site across the project
Rename — F2 on any symbol; all references update atomically
Format on save — delegates to ynz-fmt; normalizes LF line endings
Inlay hints — inline type annotations (: int), ownership modifiers (share/lend), auto-promotion hints
Code actions — quick-fix lightbulb for every diagnostic with a WHAT-INSTEAD
Semantic tokens — richer color differentiation: keywords / types / functions / variables
Doc-comment hover — /// doc comments appear in hover popups above the signature
Completion narrowing — score. where score: int shows only int methods

Features

Syntax highlighting — keywords, deferred features (shown as illegal), banned keywords (shown as deprecated), strings, comments, literals
Inline diagnostics — WHAT/WHAT-INSTEAD/WHY teaching content from the Yinz compiler
Autocomplete — keywords, primitive methods, type constants, deferred features (marked deprecated)
Hover docs — registry-sourced WHY content for every keyword, intrinsic, and deferred feature

Prerequisites

Build the ynz-lsp binary from the repo root:

cargo build -p ynz-lsp --release
# copy to PATH or set yinz.server.path in VSCode settings
cp target/release/ynz-lsp ~/.local/bin/  # or any directory on your PATH

Install

Option A — From GitHub Release (current method)

Always-current stable URL (updates automatically with each release):

curl -L https://github.com/yinzers/yinz-lang/releases/latest/download/yinz-latest.vsix -o yinz-latest.vsix
code --install-extension yinz-latest.vsix

Or download a specific version from the releases page.

Option B — VSCode Marketplace (coming soon)

Once published: search "Yinz Language" in the VSCode Extensions panel, or:

ext install yinz-lang.yinz

Configuration

Setting	Default	Description
`yinz.server.path`	`ynz-lsp`	Path to the `ynz-lsp` binary

Screenshots

Screenshots are tracked for a follow-up commit once the extension is installed and verified locally. Install the extension and open examples/pirates-roster/entrypoint.ynz to see syntax highlighting, hover docs, autocomplete, and inline diagnostics in action.