Quick Start

Flint turns a folder of Ignition project files into a structured, navigable workspace in VS Code. This guide takes you from a fresh extension install to browsing a project's resources — no gateway connection or Designer required.

Prerequisites

Everything on this page works offline. You need:

• VS Code 1.102 or later with the Flint for Ignition extension installed
• Ignition project files on disk — folders that follow the gateway's data/projects/<name>/ layout, where each project directory contains a project.json file

Live features (Script Console, Tag Browser, debugging) additionally require the Designer Bridge module and a running Designer. See Connecting a Designer once you finish here.

1. Open your projects folder

Open the folder that contains your Ignition projects in VS Code (File > Open Folder). This is typically a checkout of your gateway's data/projects/ directory, or a repository that contains one or more project directories.

Flint identifies a directory as an Ignition project only if it contains a project.json file. The project name comes from that file's title field, falling back to the folder name.

2. Run the Setup Wizard

Click the Flint icon in the Activity Bar to open the Project Browser. With no configuration in the workspace, the view shows a welcome message with a Get Started button (this runs the Flint: Get Started with Flint command, also available from the Command Palette).

The Setup Wizard walks you through:

1. Project paths — add one or more directories, or let the wizard scan them to discover the Ignition projects inside.
2. Gateways — add each gateway you work with: a name, host, port, and SSL setting. URLs are validated as you type.

When you finish, the wizard writes a flint.config.json file to your workspace. This file is meant to be committed, so your whole team shares the same project and gateway definitions.

3. Or hand-write the config

If you prefer, create flint.config.json at the workspace root yourself. A minimal configuration with one gateway and multiple environments:

flint.config.json

{
    "schemaVersion": "0.2",
    "project-paths": ["ignition-data/projects"],
    "gateways": {
        "frontend": {
            "id": "frontend",
            "ignitionVersion": "8.3.1",
            "environments": {
                "local": { "host": "localhost", "port": 8088, "ssl": false },
                "prod": { "host": "frontend.example.com", "port": 443, "ssl": true }
            },
            "defaultEnvironment": "local",
            "enabled": true,
            "projects": ["hmi-frontend", "shared-utilities"]
        }
    }
}

Key points:

Field	Meaning
schemaVersion	Use "0.2" (the current schema; "0.1" configs are migrated automatically)
project-paths	Directories to scan for projects, absolute or relative to the config file
gateways	One entry per gateway; each maps environments (local, staging, prod, ...) to host/port/SSL
projects	Which discovered projects belong to this gateway

The extension validates the file against its bundled JSON schema and reports problems inline. For every option — including per-developer overrides in flint.local.json and alternate config locations — see the configuration reference.

4. Select a gateway and project

The Project Browser tree stays empty until both an active gateway and an active project are selected. Use the status bar items on the left of the window, or the Select Gateway and Select Project commands from the Command Palette. If your gateway defines multiple environments, the status bar also shows the active environment.

Selections persist per workspace, so you only do this once.

5. Browse the project

The Project Browser now shows your project's resources grouped by type — Project Scripts, Named Queries, and Perspective resources (Views, Style Classes, Page Config, Session Props, Session Events). Expand a Python script to see its functions, classes, and constants, and click any symbol to jump to its definition. Resources inherited from a parent project appear dimmed with an (inherited from <parent>) suffix.

A few things to try next:

• Press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+R to run Flint: Search Resources across every project — see Search
• Right-click a resource to create, rename, duplicate, or delete it — see Working with Resources
• Open a Perspective view.json and press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+E to edit an embedded script as real Python — see Embedded Scripts

note

Everything so far runs entirely from the files on disk. The gateway entries in your config identify projects and enable navigation links; Flint has not connected to anything yet.

Next steps

To unlock live features — the Script Console, Tag Browser, script debugging, and Perspective profiling — install the Designer Bridge module on your gateway and launch a Designer. Continue with Connecting a Designer.