// the find
helix-editor/helix
A post-modern modal text editor.
Helix is a terminal-based modal text editor written in Rust, inspired by Kakoune's selection-first editing model rather than Vim's verb-object order. It's aimed at developers who want Vim-like modal editing but with LSP, tree-sitter syntax highlighting, and multi-cursor support working out of the box with zero plugin configuration.
LSP and tree-sitter are built into the core, not bolted on through a plugin ecosystem, so completion, diagnostics, and syntax highlighting work the moment you open a supported language with no config. Multiple selections are first-class and consistent across every command, not a special mode you have to opt into. The codebase is split into clean, purpose-specific crates (helix-core, helix-lsp, helix-dap, helix-view, helix-term), which makes it unusually easy to find where a given feature actually lives. The selection-then-action model is a real design difference from Vim, not just a rebrand, and it composes well once you're used to it.
There is no scripting or plugin API — no Lua, no vimscript equivalent — so any behavior not already in core requires forking and patching Rust, which is a much higher bar than a Neovim config file. Configuration is static TOML, which can't express conditional logic for keybindings the way a real config language can. The README itself admits indentation queries only exist for a subset of languages, so syntax highlighting coverage is well ahead of smart indent support. It's terminal-only; the custom wgpu renderer mentioned in the README is explicitly aspirational, not implemented, so there's no GUI path despite years of community interest.