And this isn’t a flashy syntax checker. It’s an open-source system called
LiveCheck that checks your code against real embedded silicon on a test
bench. Two language servers — the same kind a big IDE like VS Code uses —
check your words and registers as you type. But LiveCheck goes further: it
sends each line to the live chip over Serial Wire Debug, the chip’s own
debug peripheral — the very facility professionals use with their expensive
debuggers, not a preloaded monitor and not a program stealing clock cycles to drive a UART.
So when a blue check mark appears in the gutter, it means the line passed the language servers and the actual silicon accepted it.
And if compiling isn’t enough, there’s an assert test that runs your
expectation on the chip itself — not just “did it compile” but “does it do
what you think you told it to do.”
If you have ever hovered over the compile key with a knot in your stomach, this episode is for you: you are not alone, and it does not have to be that way.
Get LiveCheck
LiveCheck is free and open source. Get it at:
The repository is a self-contained, pre-tested release — everything in one
place: the debug kernel, the two language servers, the SVD databases, the
toolchain, a demo you work through, and a manual installer. Clone it, run
./setup.sh, flash the kernel, and you are checking Forth against real
silicon as you type. It works with any STM32 chip for which you have an SVD file — drop it in and make databases builds your chip’s database for you.
Produced with the help of AI without which this video would not have been possible
(Context: I’m Terry, a 72-year-old electronics technician — fifty years of
soldering, circuits and oscilloscopes, Forth since the 90s. I dictate my
notes and an AI helps me write them up clearly, but the actual bench work —
the registers, the LEDs, the clocks, the measurements — is mine, done live.)