Installation

Covenant ships as a single Rust binary published to crates.io. Installation takes under two minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Rust 1.75 or later — install via rustup.rs
  • Cargo (bundled with Rust)
  • Node.js 18+ (optional — for the VS Code extension only)

Verify your Rust installation:

rustc --version
# rustc 1.75.0 (82e1608df 2023-12-21) or later

Install the CLI

cargo install covenant-cli

This downloads and compiles the covenant binary from crates.io. First install takes 2–4 minutes (compiling ~19 crates).

Verify:

covenant --version
# covenant 0.7.0

Install the VS Code Extension

  1. Open VS Code
  2. Open the Extensions panel (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X)
  3. Search for “Covenant”
  4. Click Install on the extension by Kairos Lab

The extension provides:

  • Syntax highlighting for .cov files
  • Real-time lint diagnostics (38+ detectors)
  • Auto-complete for keywords, types, and built-ins
  • Hover documentation
  • Go-to-definition for contract fields and actions

The extension works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and via VS Code for the Web.

Verify the language server

After installing the extension, open any .cov file. You should see syntax highlighting immediately. Within 2–3 seconds the language server starts and diagnostics appear in the Problems panel.

If the language server does not start, check the Output panel → “Covenant Language Server” for error messages. The most common cause is a missing or outdated covenant-cli in your PATH.

Update

cargo install covenant-cli --force

The --force flag re-installs even if the version number matches, ensuring you have the latest build.

Uninstall

cargo uninstall covenant-cli

Then uninstall the VS Code extension from the Extensions panel.

Next

→ 02 — First Contract