HUME's Unfinished Modal Editor
"We have no rational grounds to believe that a text editor, however carefully constructed, will ever reach a state we might call "finished". What we observe is a succession of patches, each one arising from the last, connected by habit rather than necessity. We call this progress, but that is merely a custom of thought.
The editor presents itself as a cursor, a buffer, a mode. Experience alone guides us.
I have written this editor for my own use, and release it without expectation. If it is useful to you, that is a happy coincidence. If it is not, I cannot say I am surprised."
The pragmatic modal editor.
Zero friction, maximum output. HUME is a selection-first modal editor for the terminal, built on a simple premise: the common case should be the short case, and the classic papercuts of text editing should be designed out from the start.
HUME is my daily editor, driven by curiosity and the pure joy of hacking. I design and steer it, and AI agents are the tools I build it with. Feel free to try it out, and expect a few rough edges.
Why try it
- Less typing for what you do most. Selections come first, so acting on text is short and direct.
- Usable immediately, yours to shape. Sensible defaults on day one. Configuration and plugins are written in Scheme, and PLUM installs plugins straight from GitHub.
- Bundled, one line away. Fuzzy pickers, language servers, live git diff, and 300+ language definitions ship with the editor — each is one line of config from being on.
- Paste that does the obvious thing.
p reaches for what you most likely meant, and a kill ring keeps your recent deletes and yanks within reach.
- Comfortable with real text. Emoji, accents, and other multi-byte characters are treated as single characters, the way you'd expect.
- Make it look your way. 35 bundled themes, most Helix themes work unchanged, more installable with one command.
Quick start
Grab the archive for your platform from the latest release:
| Platform | Archive |
|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | hume-*-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz |
| Linux (x86_64, glibc 2.28+) | hume-*-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz |
| Windows (x86_64) | hume-*-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip |
See the installation guide to extract and run it.
Getting help
Read the full user manual here, or type :tutor inside HUME for an interactive introduction.
Coming from another modal editor? See Helix, Kakoune, or Vim.
License
MIT
