RedVim

Astrohacker's modal editor, based on Red. Typst, AppleScript, Caddyfile, WGSL, GN, Dockerfile, Protocol Buffers, Objective-C, Terraform/HCL, SQL, Nushell, C, C++, Python, HTML, CSS, Ruby, Zig, Swift, XML/SVG and Makefile syntax highlighting are built in alongside Red's existing languages. No external parser, query file, or grammar trust command is required.

Install

Apple Silicon, macOS 26 or newer:

brew trust astrohackerlabs/astrohacker
brew tap astrohackerlabs/astrohacker
brew install redvim
redvim example.nu

Configuration lives in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/astrohacker/redvim, or ~/.config/astrohacker/redvim.

The main file is config.toml. Themes, plugins, preferences, trust records, session state, caches and redvim.log share that root. Existing ~/.config/redvim and ~/.config/red directories are not imported automatically. To reuse an old configuration, close the editor and copy config.toml to the new directory without overwriting an existing file. Custom themes and plugins can be copied selectively; leave sockets, PID files, recovery state and caches behind. Re-trust external native grammars with redvim language trust /full/path/to/parser.so. Bundled Nushell highlighting needs no trust command. Existing Red configuration is independent. REDVIM_RUNTIME is an optional development override. Normal installations use embedded runtime assets. Language servers and optional agent integrations require their own setup; basic editing and bundled highlighting do not.

Formatting

Space f formats the current document. Prettier is the default for its built-in supported file types: JavaScript/JSX, TypeScript/TSX, Flow, JSON/JSONC/JSON5, CSS/SCSS/Less/PostCSS, HTML/Angular, Vue, Markdown/MDX, YAML, GraphQL, Handlebars and MJML. Recognized configuration filenames work too. Formatting does not require a bundled syntax grammar or a working language server.

Code follows project Prettier settings. Explicit user or language-pack formatters take precedence; [formatting] provider = "lsp" explicitly selects LSP instead. The built-in filename list comes from Prettier 3.9.9; third-party Prettier plugins are not installed automatically. Markdown has the wrapping policy below.

Language-server failures appear inside the editor and leave your document open. If gd reports a missing or incompatible server, editing and saving remain available; definition navigation still requires a working server.

Markdown wrapping

Homebrew installs Prettier (and its Node dependency) alongside RedVim. Press Space f in normal mode to format Markdown, or save to use the default automatic formatting. Paragraphs wrap to an 80-column target; long unbreakable words or URLs can exceed it. No personal formatter configuration is required.

The embedded settings are:

[languages.markdown.formatter]
name = "Prettier"
command = "prettier"
args = ["--stdin-filepath", "{file}", "--print-width", "80", "--prose-wrap", "always"]
root_markers = ["package.json", ".git"]

Project-local Prettier takes precedence over PATH. These CLI wrapping flags override project Prettier wrapping options. Override the formatter args in your config.toml to choose another width or follow project settings. Copy the complete formatter table above before editing it: explicit language definitions replace the embedded language entry. For manual-only formatting, add:

[formatting]
on_save = false

User settings are preserved on upgrade. Source/archive users must install Prettier separately if they want this formatter.

Build

Use Rust with edition 2024 support and Apple's C/C++ command line tools. The lockfile pins dependencies; Cargo fetches the pinned Nushell grammar Git revision during the build. The native parser is linked into the executable.

with-env {MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET: '26.0'} {
  cargo build --locked --release --bin redvim
}
./target/release/redvim --self-check
cargo test --locked --workspace --all-targets --all-features

See PROVENANCE.json, docs/NUSHELL.md and docs/BUNDLED_LANGUAGES.md for source revisions, language mappings, limitations and attribution. RedVim retains Red's MIT license and upstream history. Bundled Nushell grammar is MIT; the Neovim highlighting queries are Apache-2.0. WGSL retains its W3C Software and Document License and GPU for the Web BSD notices. See docs/licenses/.