APPLESCRIPT
Generated by scripts/gen-format-pages.py from docs/data/format-metadata/, FILE_FORMATS.csv and docs/formats-master.csv. Do not edit by hand: change the source, then run the script.
AppleScript Preview.
At a glance
| Purpose | AppleScript source code (plain text, not the compiled .scpt form): scripts that drive macOS applications. |
| Extensions | .applescript |
| Poka parser | poka-applescript |
| Viewer | poka-metadata-card-viewer |
| Depth tier | Metadata card (see Depth tiers) |
| Breadth tier | B4 Summary (see Breadth tiers) |
How much Poka reads
B4 Summary. The container and metadata are read and summarised (counts, properties, structure), but the main content is not rendered.
Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-applescript/src/main.rs (311 lines) and plugin.json in full. The crate has no unit tests and no tests/samples.rs, and the corpus has no .applescript sample, so the tier rests on reading the code. Covers .applescript. The output is a metadata card of counts found by matching text line by line: tell application targets, handlers, property declarations, global, set and copy, if, repeat and try, script blocks, considering and ignoring, display dialog, alert and notification, do shell script and activate, use directives and framework imports, and line counts. Judgement: B4, because the structure is summarised but the source itself is never shown.
What Poka does not read
- The source text is not shown: the card carries only counts and a few sample names, with no code view or highlighting
- Constructs are found by matching text line by line, not by parsing, so multi-line declarations, nested or indented definitions and keywords inside strings or comments can be miscounted
- Counts of named items stop where their name list is capped (tell apps at 16, handlers at 32, properties at 16), so a larger file under-reports them
- Files over 16 MiB are cut to the first 16 MiB (the card says so)
- Text that is not UTF-8 is decoded with replacement characters; no other encoding is tried
- Compiled scripts (.scpt, .scptd) are not read
Libraries
Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.
- tree-sitter-applescript (candidate; MIT; JavaScript/C; https://github.com/waddie/tree-sitter-applescript) — Tree-sitter grammar for AppleScript; language bindings (Rust etc.) suggested by file names but not confirmed.
Sources
- parsers/poka-applescript/src/main.rs
- parsers/poka-applescript/plugin.json