beancount-lsp 0.0.17

Beancount LSP

Cross-platform Language Server for Beancount, distributed as the beancount-lsp Python package. The server is implemented in Rust and shipped as a PyO3 extension, so you get native performance with a familiar Python installation and CLI.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• beancount 3.x (installed automatically as a dependency)
• An editor that can speak the Language Server Protocol over stdio

Install

pip install beancount-lsp
# or
uv pip install beancount-lsp

The package installs two console scripts: beancount-lsp (preferred) and beancount-langauge-server (compat alias).

Quick start

1. Pick your main journal file (the one that includes the rest). Call it /path/to/main.bean.
2. Configure your LSP client to start the server via stdio:
   • Command: beancount-lsp
   • Initialization options (required):

     {
         "root_file": "/path/to/main.bean"
     }
     

3. Open any included Beancount file; the server will parse the full include graph starting from root_file.

VS Code

Install the Marketplace extension: Beancount LSP. See vscode/README.md for extension configuration details (root file setting, commands, and troubleshooting).

Capabilities

• Diagnostics: runs the Beancount loader on the root file (and imports) to report parser errors and other validation issues. Diagnostics are published per file with line/column data when available.
• Account completion: offers account names gathered from all open directives in the loaded files.
• Hover: shows notes attached to the account under the cursor (note ACCOUNT "...").
• Go to definition: jumps to the open directive for the account under the cursor, searching across included files.
• Semantic tokens: tree-sitter-based semantic highlighting for Beancount syntax.
• Include expansion: include directives (and glob patterns) are loaded transitively from the root_file so completion/hover/definitions work across your whole journal.

Logging and troubleshooting

• Increase verbosity: beancount-lsp --log-level debug
• Write logs to a file: beancount-lsp --log-file beancount-lsp.log
• If the server exits immediately, verify that root_file exists and that the process can import beancount in the same Python environment.
• The server requires full-document sync; incremental sync clients are not supported.

Updating

To upgrade to the latest release:

pip install --upgrade beancount-lsp