LSP Runtime Hot Reload Design

Background

This design follows the same layering used by mcp-runtime-reinitialization.md: the CLI decides when to trigger reloads, and Core decides how to update runtime state. It also reuses the watcher principles from settings-change-detection.md: no filesystem side effects at startup, debounced changes, semantic diffs, serialized listeners, and listener failures that do not affect the main session.

The key difference between LSP and MCP is that LSP server configuration does not live in settings.json. Today the native LSP service uses LspConfigLoader to read the workspace .lsp.json and enabled extensions’ lspServers declarations, writes the result into the single-session LspServerManager via NativeLspService.discoverAndPrepare(), and finally starts all configured servers with start(). Therefore SettingsWatcher alone cannot detect changes to the workspace .lsp.json.

Current Code Assessment

LSP startup is controlled only by --experimental-lsp in packages/cli/src/config/config.ts. There is currently no --allowed-lsp-server-names flag or equivalent LSP CLI allow-list parameter; the existing --allowed-mcp-server-names flag is MCP-only.
NativeLspService is constructed once during CLI config loading. The startup path calls discoverAndPrepare(), then start(), then wraps the service in NativeLspClient and attaches it to Config.
Config.setLspClient() and Config.setLspInitializationError() currently throw after initialization, so runtime hot reload should not replace the client object. It should keep the existing NativeLspClient and only incrementally reconcile the service behind it.
LspConfigLoader only reads the workspace .lsp.json and active extensions’ lspServers. The workspace .lsp.json overrides extension config by server name.
LspServerManager.setServerConfigs() currently clears all handles; it does not yet support incremental reconcile.
The current repository has no shared pool path for LSP. Each session owns its own NativeLspService and subprocess/socket connections. The design should leave a boundary for a future shared pool, but v1 only implements single-session mode.

Goals

Make LSP server configuration changes take effect without restarting the current Qwen Code session:

start a server when it is added;
stop a server when it is removed, and remove it from status and tool routing;
restart only the changed server when its config changes;
keep unchanged servers connected and preserve their warm-up state;
never start servers that are untrusted or not allowed;
let LSP tools and /lsp status observe the new runtime state through the existing client object.

Non-goals

Do not add a shared LSP process pool in this change.
Do not support toggling --experimental-lsp at runtime. If LSP was not enabled at startup, there is no service to reload.
Do not fully watch extension install/uninstall changes that affect lspServers; manual /reload will cover extension config changes.

Design

1. Identify Each LSP Server With a Stable Hash

Add a small helper near the LSP config code:


export function lspServerConfigHash(config: LspServerConfig): string;

The hash must be stable and based on the normalized runtime config produced by LspConfigLoader:

name
languages
transport
command
args
env
initializationOptions
settings
extensionToLanguage
workspaceFolder
rootUri
startupTimeout
shutdownTimeout
restartOnCrash
maxRestarts
trustRequired
socket

Object keys must be sorted so JSON property order does not cause unnecessary restarts. Array order stays significant because command argument order and language priority can be meaningful. Do not include runtime fields such as process id, status, restart count, diagnostics, or warm-up state.

For future shared-pool compatibility, define the pool identity as:


lsp:<workspaceRoot>:<serverName>:<configHash>

The v1 single-session manager only needs to maintain serverName -> configHash, but the same hash can later be reused directly in the pool key.

2. Add Incremental Reconcile to `LspServerManager`

Hot reload should not reuse setServerConfigs(), which clears every handle. Add:


async reconcileServerConfigs(
  configs: LspServerConfig[],
): Promise<LspReconcileResult>

Flow:

Build desired maps: name -> config and name -> hash.
For existing handles whose server no longer exists, call the existing stopServer(), then delete the handle.
For existing handles whose hash changed, call stopServer(), replace the handle with { config, status: 'NOT_STARTED' }, then start it.
For new servers, create { config, status: 'NOT_STARTED' } and start them.
For servers whose hash did not change, do nothing and keep the existing handle.

Add a private field:


private serverConfigHashes = new Map<string, string>();

Clear it in stopAll() and clearServerHandles().

Return:


interface LspReconcileResult {
  added: string[];
  removed: string[];
  restarted: string[];
  unchanged: string[];
  failed: string[];
}

skipped is not part of the LspServerManager result. The manager only handles configs that have passed admission; servers rejected by admission are aggregated into the service-level result by NativeLspService.reinitialize().

Concurrency:

Add a reconcile queue in either LspServerManager or NativeLspService so reconciles run serially. Stopping and starting the same process must not race.
If a new config arrives while a server is still starting, wait for handle.startingPromise before stopping it. Reuse the existing startup lock instead of adding an extra per-server lock.
stopServer() itself must await handle.startingPromise after setting stopRequested, so stopAll(), remove, and restart paths all cover crash restarts that are still assigning their connection/process.

Failure behavior:

If a newly added or changed server fails to start, keep the handle and mark it as FAILED so /lsp can explain the failure.
Do not count a failed start as added or restarted; report it in failed.
Do not cache the config hash for a failed start. A later save with the same config must retry instead of being classified as unchanged.
If startup fails after a connection or process has been created, release that connection/process before returning. Failed initialization must not leave a language server process or socket connection alive behind a FAILED handle.
If startup fails before connection creation, including trust rejection, unsafe command path, or missing command, clear the cached config hash. A later reconcile with the same config must retry instead of treating the failed handle as unchanged.
If a removed server logs an error during shutdown, still delete it from the handle map.
One server’s startup failure must not block reconcile for other servers.

Resource cleanup:

stopServer() must release both sides of an owned server: gracefully shut down and end the LSP connection, then kill the spawned process if it is still alive. This matters for tcp/socket transports that were launched with a command; closing the socket alone is not enough.
process.kill() must be isolated with its own error handling. A process that exits during cleanup must not abort the rest of reconcile.
Graceful shutdown must always have a bounded wait. If the server config does not specify shutdownTimeout, use the default shutdown timeout instead of awaiting connection.shutdown() forever.
Shutdown timeout timers must be cleared when shutdown completes or fails so a large timeout does not retain the handle longer than necessary.
The underlying shutdown() promise must be observed even when the timeout wins the race, so a late server-side rejection cannot surface as an unhandled rejection.
stopAll() must participate in the same reconcile queue as hot reload. It is not enough to wait for the current queue and then iterate handles, because a new reconcile could otherwise enter between the wait and handle cleanup.
NativeLspService.stop() must also cancel any in-flight or queued reinitialize() operation before stopping servers. The implementation uses cooperative cancellation with AbortController: stop marks the service as stopping, aborts the active reload, and every queued reload checks the signal before loading config, reconciling, clearing document tracking, replaying documents, or waiting on replay delays. This prevents shutdown from blocking indefinitely on a slow reload while also preventing a cancelled reload from starting new LSP processes after stopAll().
Crash restarts must also serialize through the reconcile queue, or clear the hash when they permanently fail. They must not start a replacement process in parallel with a config-change reconcile.
Crash restart reset must isolate connection.end() and process.kill() errors. Reset runs when the old connection/process may already be broken, and cleanup failures must not prevent the queued restart from continuing.
NativeLspService.stop() must clear openedDocuments and lastConnections after serverManager.stopAll() so a stopped service does not retain old document sets or connection objects.

3. Add `NativeLspService.reinitialize()`

Add:


async reinitialize(): Promise<LspServiceReinitializeResult>

Flow:

If requireTrustedWorkspace is true and !config.isTrustedFolder(), call serverManager.stopAll() and return. This prevents old LSP processes from continuing after the workspace becomes untrusted.
Use the existing LspConfigLoader to load the workspace .lsp.json and extension configs.
Merge configs using the current precedence.
Apply the LSP admission filter before reconcile.
Call serverManager.reconcileServerConfigs(serverConfigs).
Clear openedDocuments and lastConnections only for removed and successfully restarted servers; preserve document state for unchanged and failed servers. Failed servers keep their document tracking so a later successful restart can replay the same open documents.
For successfully restarted servers, replay textDocument/didOpen for documents that were open before the restart. This gives the replacement server the same document context without waiting for the next hover, completion, or diagnostic request to lazily reopen each file. After replaying one or more documents for a server, wait for the same document-open delay used by lazy ensureDocumentOpen() before reporting reload completion.

The open-document snapshot must be taken after reconcileServerConfigs() returns and must be scoped to reconcile.restarted. Documents opened while reconcile is pending are then included in the replay snapshot before tracking is cleared for restarted servers.

Initial discovery should use the same admission filter before calling setServerConfigs(). This keeps startup and hot reload status consistent for per-server trustRequired filtering in untrusted workspaces.

.lsp.json parse failures need special handling: do not treat parse failure as empty config. The watcher should report an invalid-config event so the CLI can show a user-visible error, but it must not call reinitialize() for that event. reinitialize() should preserve the old runtime state, skip reconcile, and write the error to status/logs. Only deleting the file, or parsing a valid empty JSON config, means the desired config is empty.

Cold startup and hot reload intentionally use different user-config parsing strictness:

loadUserConfigs() stays lenient for startup compatibility. It skips invalid server entries and returns the valid entries that can be built.
loadUserConfigsStrict() is used by hot reload. If the existing .lsp.json is syntactically valid but contains an invalid top-level shape or a server entry that cannot be built, it returns an error and reinitialize() does not reconcile. This preserves the currently running LSP state for invalid edits. The strict path must not introduce field-level validation that cold startup does not also enforce, because that would make a config valid at startup but invalid on the next save. Tightening known-field validation should be handled as a separate compatibility decision for both startup and hot reload. If the file is missing or is deleted during the strict load, treat that ENOENT as a valid empty user config, because deleting .lsp.json is the explicit way to remove all workspace user LSP servers.

NativeLspService.reinitialize() returns a service-level result:


interface LspServiceReinitializeResult {
  reconcile: LspReconcileResult;
  skipped: Array<{
    name: string;
    reason: 'server_trust_required';
  }>;
}

Add an optional reinitialize() method to NativeLspClient and delegate to the service. To avoid opaque type assertions in Config.reinitializeLsp(), extend the LspClient interface directly:


reinitialize?: () => Promise<LspServiceReinitializeResult>;

Add to Config:


async reinitializeLsp(): Promise<LspServiceReinitializeResult | undefined>

When LSP is disabled or no client exists, this is a no-op. This method must not replace the client after Config.initialize().

Because setLspInitializationError() currently rejects calls after initialization, add a runtime-safe private state setter:


private setRuntimeLspInitializationError(error: Error | string | undefined): void

reinitializeLsp() uses it to expose reload failures through getLspStatusSnapshot() without loosening the public post-init client mutation API. A returned reconcile result with failed servers is a partial failure, not a clean success. reinitializeLsp() must set initializationError for that case and only clear the error when the reload has no failed servers.

4. Admission and Permission Boundary

Current LSP safety checks include:

--experimental-lsp is the only enablement switch;
workspace trust is checked before discovery/startup;
each server’s trustRequired defaults to true;
command existence and command path safety are checked before spawn;
workspaceFolder is constrained to the workspace root.

Hot reload must preserve these checks and complete them before starting a new server or restarting a changed server. The key rule is: do not spawn first and decide whether the server is allowed later.

Workspace .lsp.json is workspace-controlled input. User configs must therefore always be treated as trustRequired: true, even if the file explicitly declares "trustRequired": false. Extension-provided LSP configs may still use their declared trustRequired value. This prevents an untrusted workspace from lowering its own trust boundary.

Environment variables from .lsp.json are also workspace-controlled. Runtime spawn may merge allowed env overrides, but code-injection variables such as NODE_OPTIONS, LD_PRELOAD, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES, and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH must not be overridden by LSP config. PATH is allowed for the actual server process to preserve common toolchain setups. Command existence probing may keep regular config-provided env values that probes may need, but it must not use config-provided PATH when resolving bare command names. This prevents a malicious workspace PATH from redirecting a probe such as clangd --version to an unintended executable before the real startup path. Sensitive env key filtering, including the probe-only PATH filter, must be case-insensitive so Windows-style case-insensitive environment names such as Path, node_options, or Ld_PreLoad cannot bypass the denylist.

Allow-list boundary:

The current repository does not support a CLI allow-list for LSP server names. I confirmed LSP only has --experimental-lsp; allow-list parameters are MCP-only.
If this feature adds --allowed-lsp-server-names, it must behave like the MCP startup allow-list and act as an upper bound for the entire session lifetime. Runtime config may narrow this set, but it must not expand beyond the CLI startup upper bound.
Store the startup upper bound in ConfigParameters.lsp:


cliAllowedLspServerNames?: string[];

Expose a getter for it. Do not read the upper bound from mutable settings.

Admission should be extracted into a pure function:


filterLspServerConfigs(configs, {
  workspaceTrusted,
  requireTrustedWorkspace,
  cliAllowedServerNames,
}): {
  admitted: LspServerConfig[];
  skipped: Array<{
    name: string;
    reason: 'server_trust_required';
  }>;
}

Even though there is no LSP approval store or CLI allow-list today, this helper makes the security boundary explicit and leaves room for future hash-based approval gates. If a future --allowed-lsp-server-names flag is added, it should add a not_allowed skipped reason at that time instead of carrying an unwired allow-list path in v1.

Trust semantics must match the current startup path:

If requireTrustedWorkspace is true and the workspace is untrusted, NativeLspService.reinitialize() stops all servers at the service layer and returns. It does not enter the admission filter and does not preserve old servers.
If requireTrustedWorkspace is false, the service does not short-circuit globally, but the admission filter still skips individual servers with trustRequired: true.
If the workspace is trusted, trustRequired does not block the server.

5. Triggering

Two trigger paths are needed.

Automatic Workspace `.lsp.json` Trigger

Add a narrow LspConfigWatcher in the CLI, modeled after SettingsWatcher but with a smaller responsibility:

watch only the workspace root and strictly match basename .lsp.json;
do not create any directory or file;
debounce for 300 ms;
compare .lsp.json before/after using parse + canonicalize so formatting-only changes do not trigger reload;
treat ENOENT as deletion;
distinguish JSON parse failures from other read failures. Both should notify the listener with a user-visible invalid-config event and preserve the old runtime state, but the error message must reflect whether the file was invalid JSON or unreadable;
file deletion is a separate event and should notify the reload listener, producing empty workspace config;
run callbacks serially;
use listener timeout and failure isolation matching SettingsWatcher;
advance the stored semantic snapshot only after listener notification succeeds. If the listener throws or times out, retain the previous snapshot so saving the same content again retries the reload.


await config.reinitializeLsp();

Then emit an explicit runtime event such as AppEvent.LspStatusChanged. UI surfaces such as /lsp, /about, or /status can subscribe to that event to refresh. If reconcile returns partial failures, emit the status-changed event before throwing back to the watcher; this lets the UI observe successfully restarted servers while the watcher still retains the old semantic snapshot for retry. On failure, also show a user-visible error through AppEvent.LogError; include the underlying parser/startup error message when available, and do not only write a debug log.

Manual `/reload` Trigger

When the future /reload command lands, it should call both:


await config.reinitializeMcpServers(...);
await config.reinitializeLsp();

Manual reload also provides the fallback path for extension lspServers changes, because those changes may not map to a workspace .lsp.json file event.

Single Session and Shared Pool

Current state: only single-session mode exists. The repository has no LSP equivalent of the MCP transport pool.

v1: implement incremental reconcile inside LspServerManager. Each session owns its own process and socket.

Future shared pool: keep NativeLspService as the consumer and replace LspServerManager internals with acquire/release of:


lsp:<workspaceRoot>:<name>:<hash>

pool entries. Admission filtering must still happen before acquire, matching the MCP shared-pool fix, so disallowed or untrusted servers cannot be started through the pool path.

Unit Test Plan

Prioritize unit tests. Integration tests against real LSP servers are slow and environment-dependent, so they are not required.

Core Tests

packages/core/src/lsp/configHash.test.ts

hash ignores object key order;
changes to command, args order, env, settings, workspace folder, socket, and trust requirement change the hash;
hash excludes status/process/runtime fields.

packages/core/src/lsp/LspServerManager.test.ts

adding a server starts it exactly once;
removing a server shuts it down and deletes it from handles;
hash changes stop the old handle and start a new handle;
unchanged hash does not stop/start and preserves handle identity;
startup failure after connection creation releases the connection and owned process;
stopping a tcp/socket server launched by command closes the connection and kills the owned process;
shutdown timeout timers are cleared when shutdown completes first;
missing shutdownTimeout still uses the default shutdown timeout and cannot block reconcile forever;
stopAll() waits for in-flight startup before releasing resources;
stopAll() is serialized through the reconcile queue and cannot run concurrently with a later reconcile;
process.kill() errors are logged and do not abort cleanup;
one server startup failure does not affect another server’s reconcile;
concurrent reconciles run serially;
stopAll() and clearServerHandles() clear the hash map;
failed starts are reported in failed, are not reported as added/restarted, and do not cache their config hash;
initial startup failures clear the cached hash so a later reconcile with the same config retries;
crash restarts serialize with reconcile and clear cached hashes on permanent failure;
crash restart reset ignores connection/process cleanup errors and continues the queued restart;
command existence probing keeps regular config-provided env values, but does not use config-provided PATH, and code-injection env overrides are filtered before spawn;
reconcile return value contains added/removed/restarted/unchanged/failed, not admission skipped.

Mock createLspConnection, initialization, and shutdown in tests. Do not start real language servers.

packages/core/src/lsp/NativeLspService.test.ts

reinitialize() loads workspace and extension config and passes merged config to manager reconcile;
.lsp.json parse failure preserves old runtime state and does not call manager reconcile;
strict hot reload rejects invalid top-level shapes and server entries that cannot be built without reconciling, while cold startup keeps loading valid entries from the same file;
deleting .lsp.json treats workspace config as empty and triggers reconcile;
strict loading treats ENOENT as an empty user config, including the deletion race where the file disappears between watcher notification and reload;
untrusted workspace stops all servers and does not reconcile/start;
initial discovery applies the same per-server trustRequired admission filter as hot reload;
workspace .lsp.json cannot opt out of trustRequired;
if a CLI allow-list is implemented, the upper bound filters admitted configs;
service-level return value aggregates admission skipped reasons;
restarted/removed servers only clear their own document tracking.
failed servers do not clear document tracking and can replay those documents after a later successful restart.
restarted servers replay textDocument/didOpen for previously opened documents after the replacement server is ready, then wait for the document-open processing delay.
documents opened while reconcile is pending are included in the replay snapshot for restarted servers.
stop() cancels in-flight replay delay and queued reinitialize() calls before they can start new servers.
stop() clears document tracking caches after stopping all servers.

packages/core/src/config/config.test.ts

reinitializeLsp() is a no-op when disabled or no client exists;
when enabled and the client supports reinitialize, it delegates the call;
when reinitialize throws, the status snapshot exposes the initialization/reload error.
when reinitialize returns partial failures, the status snapshot exposes an initialization/reload error until a later fully successful reload clears it.

CLI Tests

packages/cli/src/config/lspConfigWatcher.test.ts

does not create .lsp.json;
detects create/modify/delete;
ignores unrelated files;
ignores formatting-only changes after canonical parse;
parse failure emits an invalid-config notification for user-visible feedback and does not trigger LSP reinitialization;
non-ENOENT read failure emits a user-visible read-failure message and does not trigger LSP reinitialization;
deleting .lsp.json triggers the reload listener;
duplicate file events are debounced;
slow listeners run serially;
listener failure does not advance the stored snapshot and the same content can be retried by a later notification.

packages/cli/src/ui/AppContainer.test.tsx or the corresponding event test

AppEvent.LspStatusChanged triggers UI refresh;
reload failure emits a user-visible error through AppEvent.LogError.
partial reconcile failure still emits AppEvent.LspStatusChanged before the listener rejects, so UI state can reflect successful parts of the reload.

packages/cli/src/config/config.test.ts

preserve the existing assertion that --experimental-lsp constructs and starts native LSP;
if --allowed-lsp-server-names is added, the parser supports comma-separated values and repeated flags, and stores them as the startup upper bound.

packages/cli/src/ui/commands/lspCommand.test.ts

if LspStatusSnapshot exposes skipped reasons, status output can show skipped/disallowed servers.

Coverage goals: new pure functions should be near 100%; watcher branch coverage should be comparable to SettingsWatcher; manager reconcile must cover add/remove/change/unchanged/failure/concurrency.

Strict Review

Conclusion

v1 should not use stop-all/start-all. That implementation is simplest, but every save would restart unchanged language servers and lose warm state. The current manager already has per-server lifecycle methods, and incremental reconcile is a manageable amount of additional code.
Do not put .lsp.json changes into SettingsWatcher. SettingsWatcher is responsible for settings-scope reloads. Making it watch arbitrary workspace files would blur the contract and make MCP/settings behavior harder to reason about. A separate, narrow .lsp.json watcher is clearer.
Do not replace NativeLspClient after initialization. Config.setLspClient() explicitly forbids post-init mutation. Updating the service behind the adapter avoids expanding the lifecycle API.
Admission must happen before process spawn or pool acquire. This is the same risk called out in the MCP shared-pool design. Even though LSP has no pool today, service-level reload results should return pre-start filtering skipped reasons so a future pool path does not accidentally start a rejected server.
A new LSP CLI allow-list is optional, but if added it must be an upper bound. The current code has no LSP allow-list. The design must not allow settings to expand command-line restrictions at runtime, or it would be weaker than MCP hot-reload security semantics.

Remaining Risks

Extension lspServers may change without .lsp.json changing. The automatic watcher does not cover all extension filesystem changes; manual /reload covers that path.
Some language servers do not tolerate rapid restarts well. Serialized reconcile and debounce reduce the risk, but tests should cover fast consecutive changes.
TCP/socket servers may be externally managed daemons. Reconcile should close the connection, but it should only assume ownership of the process when this process spawned the server via command.