Fresh

Dev tools

terminal text editor

SHOW HN2025

187points
150comments
#362of 3,837 in 2025
Top 10%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

20 positive, 23 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 30 critical, out of 73 comments about the project. Thread score -0.15.

Execution: 4 for, 16 againstIdea: 4 for, 4 againstDesign: 3 for, 3 againstPerformance: 2 for, 2 againstDocs: 0 for, 2 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Smooth multi-cursor and discoverable, intuitive UX

    From 3 comments
    • I just tested it and I must say congrats. I really enjoy the command palette, the open file menu and the multi cursor. It's well thought, really intuitive so far and I…
      az09mugen on HN
    • The multi-cursor experience is the smoothest I've seen in a terminal based editor. Congrats!
      yoavm on HN
    • Installed it and out of the box this is the best new TUI editor I've tried, probably ever. There are so many great editors out there but I've never been a fan of modal editing,…
      20after4 on HN
  • Fast performance and efficiency

    From 2 comments
    • i REALLY love this thing, especially the efficiency and speed (phenomenal!). gonna start using it daily. i guess i will be one of those providing feedback. Great work!
      winterrdog on HN
    • Installed it and out of the box this is the best new TUI editor I've tried, probably ever. There are so many great editors out there but I've never been a fan of modal editing,…
      20after4 on HN

Objections

  • Installation via npm is odd for a Rust tool

    From 1 comment
    • I'm a little annoyed that for a Rust based tool the recommended installation command is to use npm. Why? Is Cargo not good enough? Cargo seems exceptionally well to me.
      giancarlostoro on HN
  • Keybinding conflicts with macOS and Windows mouse problems

    From 3 comments
    • I tried it, I like it a lot, but I did find an issue straight away. I'm on MacOS and I have remapped the fn and command keys so it can be more like Windows (I can't undo 20+…
      arkensaw on HN
    • Just installed on both pop_os and windows 11. On Linux everything seems to work ok. On Windows 11 the mouse only moves to the start of a line, cannot select text at all click…
      Sn0wCoder on HN
    • selection is broken on mac eg cntrl+shift+right switches terminal tabs
      byyoung3 on HN
  • Large binary and 544 dependencies

    From 2 comments
    • 400mb executable for a terminal text editor? Modern developers have lost their mind
      WhereIsTheTruth on HN
    • Wow... the first impression is nice, but does this actually have 544 dependencies? Is it just me, or does that seem excessive for a TUI?
      webnrrd2k on HN

Requests

  • Customizable key bindings UI

    From 1 comment
    • I'll need to look into this, not sure what remapping does to the incoming key events. Also I'm already working on a ui for customizing the key bindings so you could do whatever…
      _sinelaw_ on HN
  • Diff views

    From 1 comment
    • Would love to see something for diff views (e.g. side-by-side/unified). I mostly program through CLI agents, and so seeing the changes it makes is probably the primary thing I…
      createaccount99 on HN
  • VSCode extension compatibility

    From 1 comment
    • Goood stuff! One of my long-standing "would make if I had the time and perseverance" themes has been a terminal text editor that's hugely VSCode-like + compatible, so always glad…
      dualogy on HN

Questions

  • Does it work over SSH on older systems

    From 2 comments
    • Would this work over SSH? I have many shells that I use for testing on different OSes and some of them have no working editors at all. I wonder what versions your binary builds…
      Uptrenda on HN
    • As it's statically linked I don't see a reason it shouldn't work in any much older Linux as well. But I haven't tried yet.
      _sinelaw_ on HN
  • Why GPL-2 instead of a permissive license

    From 2 comments
    • Looking forward to giving this a try, especially on my first gen Raspberry Pi! :) What are the reasons behind going with GPL-2 instead of a more permissive license like MIT or…
      jlundberg on HN
    • Interesting license choice, would why did you choose version 2 instead of 3?
      AbuAssar on HN

Alternatives named

  • micro

    From 1 comment
    • You should put standard keyboard bindings as a pitch on the website as well. Most people in the market for a terminal editor are probably looking for something that doesn't…
      amadeuspagel on HN
  • Neovim, Emacs, VS Code, Zed

    From 2 comments
    • I have to say... I really like it. I was settled on NVim and VSCode, then I discovered Zed, which is fantastic. I guess you should not keep your life closed for new experiences.…
      desireco42 on HN
    • Sublime, Atom, VSCode, and now Zed are all GUI-based. That's not bad - but I prefer the terminal (and I find tmux + ssh very convenient). I guess it's a matter of personal taste.…
      _sinelaw_ on HN
  • Helix and Kakoune

    From 1 comment
    • If you are doing TUI, you can't miss Kakoune and Helix as popular editors. Add them to your comparison benchmarks.
      Shorel on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

Add a badge to your READMEShown on HackerShow
[![Shown on HackerShow](https://hackershow.org/badge.svg)](https://hackershow.org/show/46135067)