Hi everyone,
has anyone already created or experimented with a Language Server Protocol (LSP) implementation for Clarion?
My main goal would be to use it with Claude Code, so it can better understand and navigate a Clarion codebase (find references, symbol lookup)
Before looking into building something from scratch, I wanted to ask whether anyone in the Clarion community has already worked on an LSP, a prototype, or anything similar that could be used as a starting point.
Even an incomplete or experimental implementation would be very interesting.
Has anyone looked into this?
Yes — I’ve done quite a bit of work on an LSP for Clarion as part of my VS Code extension:
msarson/Clarion-Extension: VS Code Extension for Clarion
It already provides much of the language/symbol information you’re talking about, so if your aim is to give Claude Code better understanding and navigation of a Clarion codebase, it should at least give you a substantial starting point rather than having to build an LSP from scratch.
However, before going too far down that route, @John_Hickey has developed a full-blown Clarion add-in called Clarion Assistant, which may actually be much closer to what you’re trying to achieve already. You can find it on the ClarionLive GitHub page:
ClarionLive
Clarion Assistant integrates my LSP, along with Claude, a code graph for Clarion solutions, the Monaco editor (the editor component used by VS Code), and quite a bit more. So I’d definitely have a look at that first, particularly given that your end goal is Claude integration and codebase navigation.
If you still want to experiment with your own approach, my LSP is completely open source under the MIT licence, as is Clarion Assistant, so you’re welcome to use either as a starting point.
Cheers,
Mark