Aura is a Python-familiar systems programming language with explicit ownership, native compilation, and structured concurrency. The language, compiler, and editor tooling are developed in the Aura repository.

This preview extension provides the maintained VS Code experience for .au source files:

Aura syntax highlighting and language-aware indentation
snippets for functions, classes, matching, concurrency, lambdas, and FFI
compiler-backed diagnostics, completions, hover, go-to-definition, and document symbols
recovery while editing incomplete functions, member access, comprehensions, slices, and numeric arrays

Install

Install Aura Programming Language from the Visual Studio Marketplace or Open VSX. The matching .vsix is also attached to each Aura release for manual installation through Extensions: Install from VSIX....

The complete installation guide covers command-line installation, WSL remote setup, custom compiler paths, and verification.

The extension includes the editor client and JavaScript language-server transport. Semantic analysis is performed by the actual Aura compiler server, the aura lsp subcommand, so the aura executable must also be installed and available on PATH.

Download a prebuilt CLI archive from Aura Releases, or install from source with Rust:

git clone https://github.com/johnolafenwa/Aura.git
cd Aura
cargo install --path crates/aura --locked --force
aura --version

Reload VS Code after installing the CLI, then open any .au file. To select a specific compiler binary, launch VS Code with:

AURA_LSP_AURA_PATH="/absolute/path/to/aura" code /path/to/aura-project

Language Support

The compiler-backed language server understands the maintained Aura surface, including classes, enums, traits, generics, modules, Result and Option, structured concurrency, closures, FFI, owned slices, and numeric arrays. It also preserves useful editor assistance while the current buffer is incomplete.

The extension stays intentionally thin: syntax assets and snippets live here, while semantic rules and diagnostics remain owned by the Aura compiler.