Tern

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

4240 stars · 370 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Tern is a stand-alone, editor-independent JavaScript code analyzer that provides deep static analysis such as type inference, completion, and definition lookup. It integrates with many editors including Emacs, Vim, Sublime Text, Eclipse, Atom, and Brackets via plugins.

Use cases

• get JavaScript autocompletion in Vim
• find where a JavaScript function is defined from my editor
• infer types of JavaScript variables for better editor hints
• add intelligent JavaScript support to Emacs
• query documentation for a JS function without leaving the editor
• refactor JavaScript with cross-file type awareness

When to choose

• you need editor-agnostic JavaScript code intelligence in editors without built-in language servers
• you maintain a legacy editor setup (Vim, Emacs, Sublime) that predates LSP
• you want a programmable JavaScript analysis engine to build tooling on top of

When to avoid

• you use a modern editor with Language Server Protocol support, where TypeScript-based servers like tsserver are better maintained
• you need analysis for languages other than JavaScript
• you require actively developed features or recent bug fixes

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

parser developer-tools editor developer-tools text-editors web-development cross-platform editor-plugin javascript code-analysis autocompletion static-analysis editor-integration language-server nodejs

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="ternjs/tern")