I'm building Nevi, a Rust terminal editor for Vim muscle memory

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

I’ve been working on a terminal editor called Nevi.
It’s a fast, Neovim‑inspired editor written in Rust, and the reason I started building it is simple: I wanted an editor that felt modern and fast, but still respected the Vim/Neovim muscle memory I already have.

I really like Neovim—it’s powerful, flexible, and I’ve spent years building muscle memory around it. However, once a setup grows with enough plugins and custom configuration, it can start to feel slower and harder to maintain.

I also really like Zed. It’s fast, clean, and modern, but its Vim mode still doesn’t cover all the keybindings and editing patterns I rely on daily. That friction adds up.

Helix is great too, but it follows a different keybinding model. I respect the design, yet I don’t want to retrain years of Vim/Neovim habits.

So I started building Nevi.

The goal isn’t to replace Neovim overnight. Instead, I aim to build a fast terminal editor where common Vim/Neovim workflows feel natural out of the box, while still providing modern editor features built in.

I use Nevi daily myself, so much of the work comes from real editing friction I encounter while building it.

Features

Some of what Nevi supports today:

• Built‑in LSP, tree‑sitter highlighting, and external formatter support
• Fuzzy file finding, live grep, file explorer, and Git signs
• Harpoon‑style quick switching, floating terminal, and LazyGit integration
• Themes, splits, TOML config, Copilot integration, and more

Nevi is still under active development. It is currently macOS‑only, and Linux/Windows support is something I want to work toward. Contributors are very welcome.

Feedback

I’m especially interested in feedback from people who use Vim or Neovim regularly. I’d love to know:

• Which keybindings you immediately miss
• Which workflows feel wrong
• Which defaults do not match your expectations
• What rough edges make it hard to use
• What would make you willing to try it on a real project

Installation

You can try it from source:

git clone https://github.com/anthonyamaro15/nevi.git
cd nevi
cargo build --release
./target/release/nevi .

I am building this because I want a fast terminal editor that respects Vim muscle memory, has modern features built in, and does not require a large plugin configuration just to feel productive.

If that sounds interesting, try it out and tell me what feels good, what feels broken, and what keybindings you miss.