Calva Flares

Updated September 16, 2025 after PEZ showed me how to use the sidebar panel.

I was playing with some Clojure code in Calva for Visual Studio Code and stumbled onto a feature. In my Primary Side Bar, I have the Calva view. I noticed the Inspector previously, but it wasn’t until now that I noticed Flare.

I decided to see what it is. Here are the official docs on Flares. One of the examples shows how to display a webpage. Here’s the code snippet shown:

(tagged-literal 'flare/html {:url "https://calva.io/",
                             :title "Calva homepage"
                             :key "example"})

Here’s my editor before evaluating that form:

After evaluating, a new tab is opened with the Flare:

Now how about that Flare under Inspector in the Primary Sidebar? Add the key-value pair

:sidebar-panel? true

(tagged-literal 'flare/html {:url "https://calva.io/",
                             :title "Calva homepage"
                             :key "example"
                             :sidebar-panel? true})

There it is, on the left!

This is awesome! I can open a webview in both the sidebar and in tabs so I don’t have to leave my editor.

Here’s an example that I find helpful:

(tagged-literal 'flare/html {:url "https://clojure.org/api/cheatsheet",
                             :title "Cheatsheet"
                             :key "cheatsheet"})

Happy coding!