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IntelliJ Plugin

Introduction

The Forester IntelliJ Plugin provides native IDE support for writing and testing behavior trees in the .tree language. It does not orchestrate tasks itself; rather, it bridges the IDE environment with the Forester runtime and CLI tools.

This allows you to write type-checked behavior trees, navigate complex hierarchical logic, and run simulations with visual SVG outputs directly from your editor, accelerating the development cycle for robotics and AI agent orchestration.

Installation

  1. Open your IntelliJ IDE (IDEA, CLion, PyCharm, etc.).
  2. Go to Settings (or Preferences on macOS) from the main menu.
  3. Select Plugins from the left-hand menu.
  4. Click on the Marketplace tab.
  5. Search for “Forester”.
  6. Click Install and restart the IDE to activate the plugin.

Features

Syntax Highlighting

Provides specialized syntax highlighting for the .tree language, making keywords, higher-order trees, decorators, and actions easily distinguishable.

Code Folding

Allows you to collapse sections of your behavior trees (such as large sequences or fallbacks), making complex task structures readable and easier to navigate.

Structure View

Displays the hierarchical organization of your behavior trees in the IDE’s Structure tool window. You can quickly see parent-child relationships and jump to specific node definitions.

Task Visualization

Integrates with Forester’s graph generation to visually map out your behavior trees. This outputs interactive or static graphical representations (SVGs) of your execution flows.

Task Simulation

Run and test your behavior trees directly within the IDE using simulation profiles. You can execute stubbed runs to verify the logic and fallback routing without needing the actual application runtime to be active.

Usage

Creating a Run Configuration

  1. Open the Run/Debug Configurations dialog in your IDE.
  2. Click the + (Add New Configuration) button and select the Forester configuration type.
  3. Specify your root folder, main tree file, and simulation profile (if applicable).

Running a Simulation via the Editor

  1. Open the .tree file containing your root node.
  2. Click the green Run icon located in the editor gutter next to the root keyword.
  3. The IDE will execute the tree simulation and output the trace logs and visual graphs to your configured output directories.