lsp-mcp/CLAUDE.md

lsp-mcp

An MCP server that exposes one Language Server to agents as a headless editor. Effect 4 (effect/unstable/ai for MCP, effect/unstable/cli for the CLI) plus vscode-languageserver-protocol for LSP. TypeScript runs directly on Node 26 (type stripping); there is no build step.

Commands

• pnpm tsc — type-check (tsgo with the Effect language-service plugin)
• pnpm test — vitest; integration tests spawn test/fixtures/server.ts, a real LSP server
• pnpm biome check --write --unsafe — lint/format (run before committing; its rewrites are safe)
• node src/main.ts --help — the CLI; smoke-test with node src/main.ts --root <dir> -- <server> [args]
• Commit with jj commit -m "...", never git

The shell may have an HTTP proxy configured; when curling the --http transport locally, pass --noproxy '*'.

Layout

src/Model.ts          agent-facing Schemas (1-based positions); drives tool input/output schemas
src/Tools.ts          Toolkit definition + handlers wiring + capability gating (supportedBy)
src/Resources.ts      MCP resources (lsp://server, lsp://diagnostics[/{file}]) and notifications
src/Server.ts         layer composition: LanguageServer → Documents+Diagnostics → transport → tools/resources
src/main.ts           CLI entry (Command/Flag/Argument), logs to stderr, NodeRuntime.runMain
src/lsp/              the ONLY place vscode-* packages are used at runtime
  LanguageServer.ts   spawn + JSON-RPC + initialize/shutdown, supervised: restarts on crash per policy, reopens documents
                      request() waits for $/progress idle and retries ContentModified / a server that is being restarted
  Documents.ts        on-demand didOpen, LRU via ScopedCache, disk change detection → didChange+didSave, applyEdit
  Diagnostics.ts      publishDiagnostics accumulation; pull (textDocument/diagnostic) or settled push per doc version
  Editor.ts           the operations = MCP tool handlers; LSP results → Model values
test/fixtures/server.ts   fixture language server (hover/definition/references/rename/symbols/TODO diagnostics)
test/fixtures/workspace.ts temp workspace layer running the fixture server

Rule: outside src/lsp/, vscode-* may only be imported as types.

Design decisions worth knowing

• Positions handed to agents are 1-based; Where accepts column or a symbol name to find on the line.
• Client capabilities are deliberately narrow (no dynamic registration, no watched files, UTF-16 only) so servers fall back to their own file watching. Settings come from --settings via workspace/configuration.
• Tools are registered after LSP initialize so unsupported ones are never offered (Tools.supportedBy). diagnostics is always offered.
• Tool failures are LspError | DocumentError (declared failure schema), so their messages reach the agent.
• Optional fields in Model use a local optional helper that omits the key when encoding, because MCP structuredContent must be JSON (no undefined).
• Diagnostics waiting: pull if the server supports it; otherwise wait for a publish for the doc's version plus a 250ms quiet period, bounded by 5s, memoized per (uri, version).
• Tests that talk to the fixture server use it.layer(..., { excludeTestServices: true }) so the real clock is used (Stream.debounce / timeouts would hang under TestClock).
• Crashes: --restart never|always|N (default 3). A crash is the process exiting or closing the connection after a successful initialize; a server that cannot initialize fails lsp-mcp immediately. Restarts back off from 500ms to 30s, a crash more than a minute after the previous one starts a new streak, and the streak limit N ends restarting for good. Requests in flight during a crash wait for the new process and retry; documents are re-didOpened with their current text; the capabilities and tool set stay those of the first process. Each restart and the final give-up are logged and sent to the MCP client as notifications/message. Once given up, every tool call fails with an LspError that says so.

Status

Complete for the first release: 13 tools, 2 resources + 1 template, stdio and HTTP transports, verified against the fixture server and typescript-language-server.

Ideas not done: inlay hints, type hierarchy, semantic tokens, partial results, workspace/didChangeWatchedFiles when a server insists on it.