varar.config.json

One varar.config.json sits at the root of your project. It is the single source of truth for what is a spec and where the step definitions are, and the same file is read identically by the varar CLI, the language server, and the test-framework adapters — so all of them always agree.

The file is the same in every language port. Unknown keys are an error rather than being ignored, because a typo’d config that silently discovers nothing is the worst failure mode this file has.

{
  "$schema": "https://varar.dev/varar.config.schema.json",
  "docs": {
    "include": ["varar-examples/**/*.md"],
    "exclude": ["varar-examples/drafts/**"]
  },
  "steps": ["varar-examples/**/*.steps.ts"],
  "snippets": {}
}

docs

An object with include and exclude, both arrays of plain globs. A file is a spec iff it matches include and does not match exclude.

• There is no default: an empty or absent include discovers nothing.
• Globs are plain — no ! prefix. Exclusion is what exclude is for.
• The array shorthand ("docs": [...]) is not accepted; the object is the canonical shape.

The extension does not decide anything: a file is a spec because it matches these globs, not because it is called .md.

Under vitest, the plugin drives vitest’s own include/exclude from these globs; see Run specs through vitest.

steps

An array of globs matching your step-definition files. Also no default.

On the JVM ports this holds fully-qualified class names rather than file globs, because that is how the JVM loads them.

snippets

An object mapping a language id (e.g. typescript) to a step-definition template, used by the editor’s Generate Step Definition action. Omit it to use the built-in template for each language. See Editor support.

$schema

Accepted and ignored by Varar — it is there so your editor can validate and complete the file.

What is not in this file

The drift baseline is a separate, generated file: varar.lock.json, written by the runner and committed alongside your specs. See Drift detection.