Telegram Type Language (TL) for Zed

A Zed extension that adds syntax highlighting for Telegram's Type Language schema files (*.tl).

The highlight categories mirror the regex-based highlighter from libprisma's prism-tl.js component:

Prism token	Matches	Zed scope
builtin	---functions---, ---types---, flags.N	@keyword / @keyword.modifier
comment	// … and /* … */	@comment
function	the type of a field (right of :)	@type
punctuation	{ } [ ] ; , < >	@punctuation.*
operator	: = ? *	@operator
entity	constructor id #abcd1234	@constant.numeric
class-name	the result type (between = and ;)	@type

Zed only supports Tree-sitter for highlighting, so the prism-tl.js regex patterns are ported to a minimal Tree-sitter grammar (grammar/grammar.js) whose node types map one-to-one to the original Prism categories.

Layout

zed-tl/
├── extension.toml              # Zed extension manifest
├── languages/tl/
│   ├── config.toml             # File suffix, comment markers, brackets
│   └── highlights.scm          # Zed-scope highlight queries
└── grammar/                    # tree-sitter-tl, referenced via path = "grammar"
    ├── grammar.js              # Grammar definition
    ├── package.json
    ├── queries/highlights.scm  # Generic highlight queries (Neovim / Helix)
    ├── src/                    # Generated parser (parser.c, headers, ABI files)
    └── test/
        ├── corpus/basic.txt    # `tree-sitter test` fixtures
        └── sample.tl           # Standalone sample for manual testing

Installing in Zed (dev install)

1. Clone this repo.
2. Open Zed, then Ctrl-Shift-P / Cmd-Shift-P → zed: install dev extension.
3. Pick the cloned zed-tl folder.

Zed will clone this repo at the commit pinned in extension.toml, compile the grammar in grammar/ to WebAssembly, and load the extension. Open any .tl file to verify (the bundled grammar/test/sample.tl works).

Working on the grammar

cd grammar
npm install
npx tree-sitter generate
npx tree-sitter test
npx tree-sitter parse test/sample.tl

Requires Node.js and tree-sitter-cli 0.25+ (older 0.22.x has a Windows module-resolution bug on Node 22).

Updating

After editing grammar/grammar.js or languages/tl/highlights.scm:

1. From grammar/, run npx tree-sitter generate && npx tree-sitter test.
2. Bump version in extension.toml.
3. Commit and push.
4. Update the commit field in extension.toml to the new SHA.
5. Commit and push again. (Zed reads extension.toml from the newest commit and clones the grammar at the SHA it names.)
6. On each machine: zed: rebuild dev extension (or reinstall).

License

MIT.