Quick Guide: Getting Started with Swimm's Visual Studio Plugin

Swimm is a handy tool that lets teams write, update, and find code documentation right inside their development environment. Swimm's Visual Studio plugin lets you create, read and navigate through your code docs smoothly, so you don't have to juggle between windows. It also takes use of Swimm's Auto-sync feature to keep your documentation always up to date. This guide will show you how to set up and use Swimm's Visual Studio plugin.

Note

This is the (Preview) version of the Visual Studio plugin.

Feature Availability in Preview​

Feature	Description	Available
Create docs	Create new documentation directly from Visual Studio	✅
View docs	Read and navigate through existing documentation	✅
Auto-sync	Keep your documentation up to date with code changes	✅
Search	Find relevant documentation within your codebase	✅
Snippets2doc	Convert code snippets into documentation	✅
Branch2doc	Create documentation for specific branches	✅
File2doc	Generate documentation for entire files	✅
Ask	AI-powered question answering	❌
Auto-docs	Automated documentation generation	❌
Rules	Custom documentation rules	❌
Tutorials & Help	In-app tutorials and help resources	❌
Current file	File-specific documentation panel	❌

Set up​

1. Download Swimm's Visual Studio plugin from the Visual Studio Marketplace. After it's installed, you'll see the Swimm icon pop up in the toolbar.

2. Click the Sign Up button and create a Swimm account, if you don't already have one. It's free and quick to do. Clicking on Sign Up will take you over to the Swimm web app. You can take a quick tour of Swimm or skip it if you prefer, but make sure to continue all the way until you create an account.

3. After signing up, be sure to create an account/workspace, or join an existing workspace. Then, head back to the IDE and log in.

4. Authorize Visual Studio to access Swimm by logging into your Swimm account.

Working with Repositories​

To start using your Swimm workspace, your repository needs to be linked to your account. Please add the repository to your workspace in the Swimm web app or from the Swimm IDE Plugin.

Notice: You do not need to authorize your Git provider account in order to work with Swimm from your IDE because you already cloned your repository.

Things you'll need in the IDE:​

1. A local Git repo.
2. Your git remote properly configured. To validate that, you can run git remote -v from the repository's directory.
3. Your repo project opened in your IDE.

What you should know about Workspaces and Repositories:​

1. A Swimm workspace can link to many repositories.
2. Private repositories can link to just one workspace.
3. Public repositories can link to multiple workspaces.
4. To connect a repo to a workspace, you need to be a workspace admin.

Navigating Swimm's Visual Studio Plugin​

You'll find the Swimm plugin in the toolbar in Visual Studio. The plugin consists of several panels:

1. Workspace panel (HOME) - Here you can set up repositories, create docs, check status, and search for docs.
2. REPO DOCS panel - This panel shows all your Swimm docs.

Tweaking the Plugin Settings​

You can adjust some of the plugin's default behavior by going to Visual Studio's Tools > Options menu, and selecting Swimm in the options panel.

---

This document is automatically kept up to date using Swimm.

---

Read this article on Swimm's official docsite