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Oleksandr Geronime edited this page Jun 27, 2026 · 3 revisions

Explorer

The Explorer panel is the primary navigation surface for a SERP project. It presents the full project model — deployments, services, interfaces, and AI sessions — as a hierarchical tree, and provides toolbar actions for the most common build and validation tasks.

Opening the Explorer

The Explorer appears automatically in the VS Code activity bar when a SERP workspace is open (detected by specs/serp.sidl). Click the SERP icon in the activity bar to reveal it.

Tree Structure

The tree is organized into four top-level branches:

Deployments

Lists every deployment defined in serp.sidl. Expanding a deployment shows its processes, and expanding a process shows the services that process hosts.

Deployments
└── MyApp
    ├── core-process
    │   ├── AudioService
    │   └── SettingsService
    └── hmi-process
        └── MainHMI

Services

Lists all services defined across all spec files. Each service entry links to:

  • Its .sidl.yaml spec file
  • Its implementation file under src/
  • Its generated base class under gen/

Interfaces

Lists all interface contracts defined in the workspace, with links to the corresponding .sidl.yaml files.

Sessions

Lists all active AI sessions in the workspace. Each entry shows the session's role, the element it is scoped to, and its current status. See SERP AI Sessions for details.

Toolbar Actions

The toolbar at the top of the Explorer panel provides the following actions:

Action Description
Refresh Reload the project model from specs. Useful after editing .sidl.yaml files manually.
Validate Run serpgen validate against all spec files. Errors and warnings appear inline in the tree and in the VS Code Problems panel.
Generate Run serpgen generate-workspace to regenerate all source stubs and generated files, then refresh the tree.
Build Build the active deployment using the selected build profile.
Run Start all processes in the active deployment.
Stop Stop all running processes in the active deployment.

The same actions are available via keyboard shortcuts — see Plugin Overview.

File Watching

The extension watches the specs/ directory for file changes. When any spec file is modified and saved, the project model is automatically refreshed and the tree updates without requiring a manual Refresh.

Service Detail Panel

Clicking a service chip (either in the Explorer tree or in the Architecture Dashboard) opens the Service Detail Panel, which shows:

  • Interface — the interface the service implements, with a link to the .sidl.yaml contract file
  • Implementation file — link to the source file under src/
  • Generated base class — link to the generated file under gen/
  • Active AI sessions — any currently running AI sessions scoped to this service, with quick-start buttons

Inline Validation Errors

When Validate is run and serpgen reports errors, the affected tree nodes are decorated with error or warning icons. Clicking the node reveals the error detail. Full diagnostics are also forwarded to the VS Code Problems panel (Ctrl+Shift+M / Cmd+Shift+M).

Related Pages

SERP Wiki

Getting Started

The Development Model

Architecture Language

Code Generator

Framework Internals

VS Code Plugin

Examples

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