Language support, and its edges.

Python

Bundled server · basedpyright · .py .pyi

Python intelligence comes from basedpyright, bundled with the app and run as its own process. There's nothing to pip install and no server path to configure. I ship the analyzer with Shikigami, and it's used no matter which interpreter your project runs on.

What you get

• Type diagnostics as you edit, at whichever strictness you pick.
• Completion on member access, with the matching import added when you accept a symbol.
• Hover and signature help while you type a call.
• Outline, go to definition, find references, and document highlights.

Settings

• Type checking: off, basic, standard, or strict.
• Diagnostic scope: report problems for open files only (the default) or the whole workspace.
• Interpreter: set one explicitly, or let Shikigami find it.

Finding your interpreter

Shikigami checks, in order: an interpreter you set yourself, then .venv, then venv, then python3 on PATH. The pane always shows which one it landed on and how it got there.

I deliberately ignore $VIRTUAL_ENV. It reflects the shell that happened to launch the app (one answer for every window), and the interpreter is a per-project question, not a per-shell one.

If your project already configures pyright itself, through pyrightconfig.json or a [tool.pyright] / [tool.basedpyright] section, Shikigami sends no settings of its own and tells you so. Your configuration wins.

Known limits

• No semantic highlighting. Python colours come from the syntax grammar.
• Servers stay running while the workspace is open. Each holds roughly 176 MB, so up to eight run at once and further workspaces go without.
• No whole-project inspection command yet; whole-workspace reporting is a setting, not an action.

PHP

Built-in engine · php-parser · PHP 8.1–8.5 · .php

PHP is the one language Shikigami analyzes itself, with no external language server involved. That makes it the deepest tier in some directions and the shallowest in others: navigation and completion go further here than anywhere else, while hover and signature help don't exist yet.

What you get

• Semantic highlighting: classes, functions, properties, parameters, enum members, and attributes coloured from real parse results. PHP is the only language with this.
• Completion across three sources: PHP built-ins, your own project, and Composer packages. Built-ins are filtered to your PHP version, so a class added in 8.4 will not be offered on an 8.1 project.
• Member completion for Class::, $this->, self::, static::, parent::, and chains like $obj->getUser()->, followed across files, through inheritance, and into vendor types.
• Variable completion at $, covering parameters, locals, foreach and catch bindings, closure use captures, and superglobals, each with its type where one can be determined.
• Auto use imports when you accept a class, interface, or enum.
• Go to definition and find references across the project, for classes, functions, constants, methods, properties, class constants, and enum cases, including nullsafe ?-> access.
• Syntax diagnostics and same-file document highlights.

Version target

Shikigami reads your PHP version from composer.json and falls back to 8.1. You can pin a different one from the status bar. The target drives which built-in symbols exist and which signatures show up.

Indexing

Enabling PHP builds a project index, then a second pass over vendor/ if Composer packages are present. Progress shows in the status bar; the result is cached, so later starts load instead of re-crawling. I measured first vendor crawls at about 5 seconds for a Laravel skeleton and 8.6 seconds for a Symfony project. Not instant, but you only pay it once.

If Composer lives in a subdirectory, point Source root at it and version detection, indexing, and vendor scanning all follow.

Known limits

• No hover and no signature help. These are the clearest gaps against the other two languages, and I'd rather say so than let you find out mid-review.
• References are project-only. Vendor code is indexed for jumping to and completing from, but I don't search its call sites, so “find usages” won't show you uses inside vendor/.
• No undefined-symbol diagnostics; only syntax errors get reported.
• Runtime magic stays invisible: container bindings, facades, __call, and dynamically built class names can't be resolved by reading source alone.
• Ambiguous receivers get no suggestion rather than a guessed one. An empty result can mean “none” or “couldn't resolve”. I'd rather stay quiet than guess wrong.
• References reflect saved files, so results can lag an unsaved edit.

TypeScript & JavaScript

Bundled server · typescript-language-server · TypeScript compiler · .ts .tsx .mts .cts .js .jsx .mjs .cjs

TypeScript and JavaScript work the moment you open a file. No switch, no setup: Shikigami bundles both the language server and the TypeScript compiler, and I pin the server to the bundled compiler so it never picks up a different one from your machine.

What you get

• Type diagnostics from the real TypeScript server, honouring your tsconfig.json.
• Completion with auto-import, hover, and signature help.
• Outline, go to definition, find references, and document highlights.

Known limits

• No semantic highlighting; colours come from the syntax grammar.
• A very large project pays a cold-start cost on first open while the server loads it.
• Like Python, servers stay running for the life of the workspace.

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Everything on this page describes shipped behaviour, including the gaps. I'm not going to pretend the limits aren't there. They're tracked, and support gets deeper release by release.