But where are the AI features?? Gonna get left behind!
Only joking of course, actually quite refreshing to see a new version announcement of something this major without any AI nonsense.
But where are the AI features?? Gonna get left behind!
Only joking of course, actually quite refreshing to see a new version announcement of something this major without any AI nonsense.
> But where are the AI features?? Gonna get left behind!
Obviously vim doesn't need AI, but one feature I really wish vim had was native support for multiple cursors.
It's the feature that lured me away to Sublime Text in the first place many years ago, and it's a pre-requisite for pretty much every editor I use these days, from VSCode to Zed.
There are plugins, but multicursor is such a powerful force-multiplier that I think a native implementation would benefit.
The canonical answer to this request is as follows: if you need multi-cursor (or, worse, multi-cursor with mouse support) then you are doing something non-Vim way (aka: wrong way) and there is a better way to do it.
If you need multi-cursor to do manual search and replace in text, then don't, just do automatic search and replace, maybe scoped to a block. If you need multi-cursor for refactoring or renaming a variable across entire source file, then don't, use LSP plugin (or switch to Neovim) and do the proper refactoring action.
Sure, there are legit cases of using multi-cursor in Vim, but they are rare. So it's not worth to put it into Vim itself.
personally, I know I can use search and replace, but <ctrl-n>-n-n-c-replacement[0] is easier on my mind than the search&replace alternative
[0] I've been using vim-multiple-cursors for years, it's abandoned but still works ok most of the time.
Vim (kind of) has it though it doesn’t render the cursors:
Ctrl-V, then move down the lines you want to edit, Shift-I to insert text on multiple lines at once.
Multi cursor is on the neovim roadmap https://neovim.io/roadmap/
Funny, I used multiple cursor a lot back when I used Sublime Text, but stopped needing them when I switched to Vim.
There are plenty of ways to achieve workflows that can be done witg multiple cursors even in plain Vim: macros, :norm, visual blocks, :s, etc.
I'm curious to know what kind of editing you do that you need this so much?
How does it work?
Vim and its ilk have plenty of AI.
Actual Intelligence. It's connected to fingers/hands/arms/torso that is using it.
I agree and I know what you're saying, but I'm pretty curious: how are people using AI with vim? I've seen some scripts for ollama but what are most people doing?
I don't use it this way yet, but aider has a watch mode that would be fun with vim:
https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html
I imagine with vim, from the document you're editing, you'd go:
:ter
to get a terminal. Fire up aider with --watch-files in the terminal. Hop back up to the file and start telling it what to do. Hit L when it's done to see the changes.
That's just a guess but after writing it out I kinda want to try it.
When I use aider it's via its chat interface and then I load the file with vim in another terminal tab to follow along but I think --watch-files with vim would be fun.
At least for Neovim, there are many official or community-made AI autocomplete plugins, and a bunch of chat interfaces as well
tmux + vim + Claude Code
This. With so much of my work being done with Claude Code via terminal, I’ve used vim and tmux more than I have in the 20 years since I was first introduced.
How many people don’t know tmux in the industry is really beyond me.
With all the buzz about orchestrating in the age of CLI agents there doesn't seem to be much talk about vim + tmux with send-keys (a blessing). You can run as many windows and panes doing so many different things across multiple projects.
What's the elevator pitch if I already know Screen and I can just open multiple windows of the terminal emulator?
No pitch - just use screen, most people use tmux in exactly the same way - open a few splits and switch between them with keyboard shortcuts.
I switched from screen to tmux due to rumor about the screen code base. Maybe not a good reason. But I don’t regret it, tmux works well.
Just an honest opinion of someone who didn’t have skin in the game. Not sure if it helps.
same, although I'm using zellij instead of tmux. Copilot works well in vim too.
Nearly this, but using ghostty instead of tmux. You don’t get the remote connection aspect of tmux, but for splitting/zooming/preserving windows it is fantastic. The best part is you can configure natural shortcuts rather than using a leader for everything.
As a tmux user, sell me on ghostty. I hate the leader key, especially in VIM.
The copilot plugin works well
That's good to know. I've never actually tried Copilot. I was going to try this week.
Totally worth it. I tied it to openrouter.ai so that I could use 'all the AI's' (TM)
Totally worth it
AI makes advanced IDE features less relevant (or, more precisely, much easier to ignore or work without.)
I still have PyCharm, especially for working with data which I do a lot it helps quite a bit, but by default I'm back to a very vanilla Vim setup. Others have mentioned tmux which is great and I'd use anyway especially over ssh, but even just terminal tabs for instances of agents are fine frankly.
Avante.nvim is quite active
The announcement itself looks potentially AI-assisted, judging by the bulleted list style and redundant text under the "Charity: Transition to Kuwasha" section. But maybe some people just write that way.
Wait a couple of more months, and no-none will know to write any other way.
I made a vim extension where you describe the edit/action you want in natural language, and my ollama model thats trained on books like Practical Vim returns the key sequence and you can press e to execute without leaving vim. So you get automation help but also learn the syntax.
That's pretty nifty. Link please
:please exit vim now
I was happy with VSCode after decades of Vim because it felt light enough out of the box until Copilot starting showing up in every nook and cranny of the damn thing. I switch back to Vim last year.
AISREIR
AI Should Rewrite Everything In Rust
More like AESIR, AI Enhancing Stupidly In Rust.
Bonus point linking the name to the hellish corporation in Max Payne.