Move on Aptos Language Extension

This is the official Visual Studio Code (and Cursor) extension for developing smart contracts in the Move language on the Aptos blockchain.

Built from the ground up, it delivers a modern and performant development experience, offering essential features like semantic highlighting, real-time diagnostics, auto-formatting and seamless integration with the rest of the Aptos toolchain - all designed to help developers build and test Move contracts with ease and confidence.

Actively maintained by the Aptos team, this extension is designed to evolve alongside the Move language and supports both developers who are new to Move, and those building more complex applications.

Features

• Semantic Highlighting
• Go to Definition
• Find All References & Symbol Renaming
• Type and Documentation on Hover
• Contextual Auto-Completion
• Inlay Hints for Types and Function Parameters

• Real-Time Diagnostics
• Code suggestions
• movefmt Integration

• Run #[test] functions
• Check modules and functions with Move Prover

Installation

We publish releases both on VSCode Marketplace and OpenVSX.

We published nightly releases in the past, but as development got slower - we stopped, so please move to the stable releases in your VSCode.

Build from sources

Clone the repo, then run:

cargo run -p xtask -- install --server --client

(or just cargo xtask install --server --client, see https://github.com/matklad/cargo-xtask)

The command builds move-on-aptos.vsix extension file and installs it into your VSCode. Then it runs cargo install to build and install language server.

Put

"move-on-aptos.server.path": "~/.cargo/bin/aptos-language-server",

to your settings.json to point the extension to your locally built language server.

Build from sources: Cursor AI editor

If you use https://www.cursor.com/ AI editor, you need to do a bit more work.

Run the installation command above. The result would be a ./editors/code/move-on-aptos.vsix vscode extension package. Then install it from the editor using the "Install from VSIX..." command.

Configuration

Note

Extension by itself won't download your dependencies from the network.

If you see unresolved reference errors on the AptosFramework imports - try running aptos move compile once on your project to download your remote dependencies.

This extension provides configurations through VSCode's configuration settings. All configurations are under move-on-aptos.*.

See the configuration docs for more information.

Claude integration

Make sure aptos-language-server is available in your PATH. For that, install aptos-language-server with

cargo xtask install --server

(if repo is cloned),

or

cargo install --git https://github.com/aptos-labs/move-vscode-extension.git aptos-language-server

(if not)

or just download latest pre-built binary from the releases.

Then, in claude:

/plugin marketplace add aptos-labs/move-vscode-extension
/plugin install move-lsp@aptos-labs

For aptos-language-server to be able to recognize your package correctly, claude command needs to run from the package root.

Contributing

We welcome feedback, bug reports, and contributions from the community!

If you run into a bug, usability issue, or have a feature request, please don’t hesitate to open an issue. This will help us improve the experience for everyone.

That said, this project is still in its early stages, and many parts of it are evolving quickly. If you're planning to work on a larger change or feature, we encourage you to start a discussion or open an issue first. This helps ensure alignment and avoid unnecessary rework.

Acknowledgements

This project is inspired by rust-analyzer.

Portions of the code in this project are derived from rust-analyzer and are used under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.

We thank the rust-analyzer contributors for their work and inspiration.