Generic syntax highlight definition mechanism

[tredondo]

Pre-submit Checks

• I have searched Warp feature requests and there are no duplicates
• I have searched Warp docs and my feature is not there

Describe the solution you'd like?

Syntax highlight definition files have been common since the 90s - see Midnight Commander.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

This would allow distributing work on all the syntax highlight feature requests to individual contributors, and would be future-proof for new languages.

Additional context

Modern syntax definitions:

• Sublime Text
• Textmate
• see Rust-specific libraries

Operating system (OS)

Cross-platform

Warp Internal (ignore) - linear-label:39cc6478-1249-4ee7-950b-c428edfeecd1

[oz-for-oss]

@tredondo

Here's what I found while triaging this issue:

Thanks for the feature request. This looks like a broader extensibility request for Warp's code syntax highlighting rather than a single-language support request; Warp's current public docs describe a fixed built-in language set.

Maintainer details

I concluded that feature request for a generic, externally extensible syntax-highlighting definition mechanism for Warp's code display/editor surfaces..

Triage summary

This is an enhancement request for a generic syntax-highlight definition mechanism rather than a request for one specific language. Warp currently appears to load syntax highlighting from a fixed built-in language set and bundled arborium/tree-sitter queries, so arbitrary user- or contributor-supplied syntax definition files are not supported today.

Evidence

• Public docs describe syntax highlighting as part of the built-in code editor and list a fixed set of supported languages.
• The current language registry gates highlighting through SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES, language_by_name, and language_by_filename, then loads embedded grammar config and arborium highlight queries.
• The grammar README explicitly notes that Warp does not use custom highlights.scm files and instead relies on arborium's bundled highlighting queries.

Likely implementation area

The main work would likely touch the language registry and grammar-loading path, syntax-tree highlight query conversion, and file/language detection used by the code editor and code display surfaces. Product scope still needs to decide whether the generic mechanism should target user-installed definitions, contributed/bundled definitions, or both, and whether it should apply to the file editor, diffs, markdown code blocks, terminal output, or terminal input command highlighting.

Duplicate check

I found one close related issue, #7559, which asks for customizable syntax highlighting for custom file types and extension mappings. Several other open issues request specific language support, including ERB, Svelte, Luau, and R, but I did not mark this as a duplicate because the workflow requires at least two strong duplicate candidates and those language-specific requests are narrower than this mechanism-level proposal.

This is my automated analysis and may be incorrect. A maintainer will verify the details.

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