Are Language servers remote or local processes

Question

A lot of IDE's and plugins talk about language servers that provide some of the IDE features like auto-completion, linting, and highlighting. Is the language server just some local process that is also running on my machine or is my code being sent somewhere for analysis (would features stop working if I have no internet). Also if the code is being sent somewhere how is that safe?

Answer 1

The process is nicely explained here. In case of VSCode extensions, 99% of all LSP will be local. But at least in theory, it might as well run over network.

Also if the code is being sent somewhere how is that safe?

Language server protocol only defines the protocol itself, no encryption details or permission constraints. If you use some client to interact with it (say, an IDE extension), the client itself can already do what it wants without you noticing. The server is only yet another implementation detail.