tree-sitter init-config

This command initializes a configuration file for the Tree-sitter CLI.

tree-sitter init-config

These directories are created in the "default" location for your platform:

• On Unix, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tree-sitter or $HOME/.config/tree-sitter
• On Windows, %APPDATA%\tree-sitter or $HOME\AppData\Roaming\tree-sitter

Note that the CLI will work if there's no config file present, falling back on default values > for each configuration option.

When you run the init-config command, it will print out the location of the file that it creates so that you can easily find and modify it.

The configuration file is a JSON file that contains the following fields:

parser-directories

The tree-sitter highlight command takes one or more file paths, and tries to automatically determine, which language should be used to highlight those files. To do this, it needs to know where to look for Tree-sitter grammars on your filesystem. You can control this using the "parser-directories" key in your configuration file:

{
  "parser-directories": [
    "/Users/my-name/code",
    "/Users/my-name/other-code"
  ]
}

Any folder within one of these parser directories whose name begins with tree-sitter- will be treated as a Tree-sitter grammar repository.

theme

The Tree-sitter highlighting system works by annotating ranges of source code with logical "highlight names" like function.method, type.builtin, keyword, etc. To decide what color should be used for rendering each highlight, a theme is needed.

In your config file, the "theme" value is an object whose keys are dot-separated highlight names like function.builtin or keyword, and whose values are JSON expressions that represent text styling parameters.

Highlight Names

A theme can contain multiple keys that share a common subsequence. Examples:

• variable and variable.parameter
• function, function.builtin, and function.method

For a given highlight produced, styling will be determined based on the longest matching theme key. For example, the highlight function.builtin.static would match the key function.builtin rather than function.

Styling Values

Styling values can be any of the following:

• Integers from 0 to 255, representing ANSI terminal color ids.
• Strings like "#e45649" representing hexadecimal RGB colors.
• Strings naming basic ANSI colors like "red", "black", "purple", or "cyan".
• Objects with the following keys:
  • color — An integer or string as described above.
  • underline — A boolean indicating whether the text should be underlined.
  • italic — A boolean indicating whether the text should be italicized.
  • bold — A boolean indicating whether the text should be bold-face.

An example theme can be seen below:

{
  "function": 26,
  "operator": {
    "bold": true,
    "color": 239
  },
  "variable.builtin": {
    "bold": true
  },
  "variable.parameter": {
    "underline": true
  },
  "type.builtin": {
    "color": 23,
    "bold": true
  },
  "keyword": 56,
  "type": 23,
  "number": {
    "bold": true,
    "color": 94
  },
  "constant": 94,
  "attribute": {
    "color": 124,
    "italic": true
  },
  "comment": {
    "color": 245,
    "italic": true
  },
  "constant.builtin": {
    "color": 94,
    "bold": true
  },
}

parse-theme

The tree-sitter parse command will output a pretty-printed CST when the -c/--cst option is used. You can control what colors are used for various parts of the tree in your configuration file. Note that omitting a field will cause the relevant text to be rendered with its default color.

{
  "parse-theme": {
    // The color of node kinds
    "node-kind": [20, 20, 20],
    // The color of text associated with a node
    "node-text": [255, 255, 255],
    // The color of node fields
    "field": [42, 42, 42],
    // The color of the range information for unnamed nodes
    "row-color": [255, 255, 255],
    // The color of the range information for named nodes
    "row-color-named": [255, 130, 0],
    // The color of extra nodes
    "extra": [255, 0, 255],
    // The color of ERROR nodes
    "error": [255, 0, 0],
    // The color of MISSING nodes and their associated text
    "missing": [153, 75, 0],
    // The color of newline characters
    "line-feed": [150, 150, 150],
    // The color of backtick characters
    "backtick": [0, 200, 0],
    // The color of literals
    "literal": [0, 0, 200],
  }
}