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The AMD editor for VS Code

You can write a whole universe in Notepad — everything is plain text. But if you use Visual Studio Code (it's free), the Artemis AMD extension turns that plain text into a living authoring surface: it catches mistakes as you type, draws your story as a graph and your systems as a map, and lets you edit any node in a form — faces and all — without hand-typing AMD syntax.

It's optional. Nothing here changes your .amd files' format; the extension just makes them easier to see and safer to edit.

In a hurry?

Jump to the Get started tutorial — it installs the extension and builds a character with a face and a scene in a few minutes.

Install it

  1. Get VS Code if you don't have it: https://code.visualstudio.com/.
  2. Download the extension. Go to the sbs_cli releases page and grab the amd-language-*.vsix from the newest "Artemis AMD (VS Code)" release.
  3. Install the .vsix. In VS Code, open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), run Extensions: Install from VSIX…, and pick the file you downloaded.
  4. Open your mission folder (the one with your .amd files) and open any .amd file. Colors appear immediately; the smart features come online a moment later.

It finds Cosmos on its own

The smart features (error-checking, the map/graph, face previews) are powered by a language server that ships with your Cosmos install. Because your .amd files live inside the Cosmos folder, the extension auto-detects the install and starts it for you. If you keep .amd files somewhere else, set amd.cosmosPath in VS Code settings to your Cosmos folder (the one with PyRuntime/ and data/).

What it gives you

Feature What it does
Live error-checking Red/yellow squiggles for broken headings, dangling links, unfired signals, non-ASCII text — the mistakes that otherwise make a node silently vanish in-game.
Navigation F12 to jump to a link's target, Shift+F12 to find every reference, F2 to rename a key across the whole mission, hover to preview, Ctrl+Space to complete node keys.
Mission Map Your landmarks and regions on a grid — drag to move/resize, right-click empty space to add one, click to edit.
Story Graph Your nodes and their links as swimlanes by section — collapse branches, filter sections, focus one conversation, drag between nodes to link them.
Inspector Edit any node as a form (display, fields, body) that saves live and stays in sync with the text — in a side panel, a pop-out tab, or a drawer right inside the map/graph.
Faces A live face preview and a Face Builder with a slider per feature — build a character's portrait without memorizing face codes.
Formatter Tidy a .amd file's whitespace and fences (optionally on save) without touching your words.

The tutorial uses most of these to build something real. Everything here is also summarized in the extension's own Help (HELP.md in the editors/vscode/ folder).

The two views, in one picture

  • The Mission Map answers "where is everything?" — the physical layout of a system: stations, derelicts, regions.
  • The Story Graph answers "how does it connect?" — who talks to whom, which choice leads where, which quest reveals what.

Open both from the icons in the top-right of the editor toolbar when a .amd file is focused, or from the Command Palette (Artemis AMD: Show Mission Map / Show Story Graph). Click a thing in either one and it opens in the Inspector, ready to edit — your text, map, graph, and form all stay in lockstep.