Zed

primate ships a Zed extension that wires up:

• a tree-sitter grammar for syntax highlighting,
• a language server pointing at the primate lsp binary.

Source lives at editors/zed/ in the project repo.

Install

1. Install the primate binary so the extension can shell out to primate lsp:

   cargo install primate --locked
   

   The binary lands at ~/.cargo/bin/primate. As long as that’s on your PATH, you’re set. Otherwise, point Zed at a custom binary path in settings.json:

   {
     "lsp": {
       "primate": {
         "binary": {
           "path": "/absolute/path/to/primate"
         }
       }
     }
   }
   

2. Install the extension from the Zed registry:

   • Command palette → zed: extensions → search “primate” → Install.

3. Open any .prim file. Syntax highlighting and inline diagnostics should appear immediately.

What you get

• Tree-sitter syntax highlighting for .prim files (keywords, type names, enum variants, unit suffixes on numeric literals).
• LSP-driven diagnostics, hover, go-to-definition, find-references, format-on-save, and contextual completion.

Verifying it works

Open one of examples/constants/*.prim from a checkout. You should see:

• Keywords (enum, type, namespace, use) styled as keywords.
• Type names highlighted consistently in declarations and use statements.
• Unit suffixes (30s, 100MiB) styled separately from the digits.
• Red squiggles on broken syntax.
• cmd-. formats the buffer (LSP textDocument/formatting runs the same logic as primate fmt).
• Hover on a type name shows its kind, namespace, and doc comment.
• Cmd-click on a type name jumps to its declaration.

If diagnostics don’t show, check ~/Library/Logs/Zed/Zed.log — the extension prints [LSP] ... messages on stderr. The usual failure is “primate not on PATH”; either cargo install primate --locked or set lsp.primate.binary.path.

Install as a dev extension

If you’re hacking on the extension itself rather than just using it, install the local source as a dev extension:

1. Clone the project repo.

2. In editors/zed/extension.toml, change the grammar repository from the GitHub URL to a file:// URL pointing at your local checkout (the registry build clones over HTTPS, but file:// works for local dev):

   [grammars.primate]
   repository = "file:///absolute/path/to/this/repo"
   rev        = "main"
   path       = "editors/zed/tree-sitter-primate"
   

3. In Zed: command palette → zed: install dev extension → pick editors/zed/.

Iterating:

To restart only the language server inside Zed: editor: restart language server.

Why a tree-sitter grammar lives in this repo

primate ships its parser in Rust, but Zed (and other editors) need a tree-sitter grammar for syntax highlighting and structural queries. The parallel grammar in editors/zed/tree-sitter-primate/ is tuned for highlighting, not for being a spec-compliant parser. It stays in sync with the Rust parser as the language evolves.

Highlighting gaps are almost always a fix in grammar.js (the grammar) or languages/primate/highlights.scm (the highlight rules).