nib

A modal text editor where everything — including the default keymap — is a WebAssembly plugin.

Warning

nib is an early experiment. It is not usable as a daily editor yet, and the plugin API will change without notice.

Idea

• Small core. The core owns buffers, selections, rendering, and the plugin host. Nothing else.
• Plugins in any language. Plugins are WebAssembly components built against a single API definition (WIT). Write them in Rust, Go, or anything that targets the component model.
• Defaults are plugins too. The standard feature set, starting with a Helix-style keymap, is built with the same public API that third-party plugins use.

Status

What works today, all as plugins on the same public API:

• A Helix-style keymap (helix), with a file picker (picker, Space f), split views (Ctrl-w), and the system clipboard (Space y / Space p)
• Other editors' ways of editing to choose from with base in config.toml: nano's (nano), Vim's (vim, checked key for key against Neovim), and Emacs's (emacs, checked against GNU Emacs)
• Syntax highlighting and text objects with tree-sitter for Bash, Go, JSON, Markdown, Python, Rust, TOML, and YAML (one data-only plugin per language), with languages inside others: the code blocks and inline elements of Markdown, and the Markdown of Rust doc comments
• LSP diagnostics, hover, go to definition, and completion (lsp); rust-analyzer, gopls, and pyright are set up by default
• Installing plugins from GitHub releases, URLs, or by name
• Plugin SDKs for Rust and Go, with a template, a build command, and tests that run without a terminal

Ctrl-g opens the core menu and stops a plugin that hangs; it is the one key no plugin can take.

Installing

There are no prebuilt binaries yet; they come with 1.0.0. Build and install nib from source, with Rust and its wasm32-wasip2 target, CMake, and curl:

rustup target add wasm32-wasip2
cargo xtask build-plugins      # the standard plugins, which nib embeds
cargo install --path tui       # installs `nib`

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the tests and the rest of the toolchain.

Using

nib FILE...
nib config init                # write commented settings files to start from
nib config path                # show where the settings are

Plugins made by others are installed as prebuilt .nib.tar.gz archives. nib shows the capabilities a plugin asks for and asks before installing it:

nib plugin search [WORD]       # find plugins in the index
nib plugin add wordcount       # install by name from the index, or wordcount@v0.1.0
nib plugin add owner/repo      # or from a GitHub release, a URL, or a file
nib plugin update
nib plugin list
nib plugin remove wordcount

To write one, start from a template that builds and passes its tests, and read the plugin guide:

nib plugin new NAME [--go]     # a plugin in Rust, or in Go
nib plugin build               # writes plugin.wasm
nib plugin test                # runs tests/*.toml without a terminal
nib --plugin .                 # try it

Related repositories

• nib-editor/plugins: the index that nib plugin search and nib plugin add NAME read. Add a plugin to it by pull request.
• nib-editor/plugin-example: an example plugin in Go with a release workflow, to start a plugin from.

Layout

core/      editor core (buffers, selections, rendering, plugin host)
tui/       terminal frontend, builds the `nib` binary
api/       plugin API definitions (WIT) — the single source of truth
sdk/       plugin SDKs per language
plugins/   standard plugins
docs/      design documents
bench/     latency benchmark against other editors

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option. Plugin SDKs are under the same terms, so plugin authors are free to choose any license for their plugins.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how contributions are licensed.