Fresh
A new terminal editor built in Rust
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
I built Fresh to challenge the status quo that terminal editing must require a steep learning curve or endless configuration. My goal was to create a fast, resource-efficient TUI editor with the usability and features of a modern GUI editor (like a command palette, mouse support, and LSP integration).Core Philosophy:- Ease-of-Use: Fundamentally non-modal. Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve.- Efficiency: Uses a lazy-loading piece tree to avoid loading huge files into RAM - reads only what's needed for user interactions. Coded in Rust.- Extensibility: Uses TypeScript (via Deno) for plugins, making it accessible to a large developer base.The Performance Challenge:I focused on resource consumption and speed with large file support as a core feature. I did a quick benchmark loading a 2GB log file with ANSI color codes. Here is the comparison against other popular editors: - Fresh: Load Time: *~600ms* | Memory: *~36 MB* - Neovim: Load Time: ~6.5 seconds | Memory: ~2 GB - Emacs: Load Time: ~10 seconds | Memory: ~2 GB - VS Code: Load Time: ~20 seconds | Memory: OOM Killed (~4.3 GB available) (Only Fresh rendered the ansi colors.)Development process:I embraced Claude Code and made an effort to get good mileage out of it. I gave it strong specific directions, especially in architecture / code structure / UX-sensitive areas. It required constant supervision and re-alignment, especially in the performance critical areas. Added very extensive tests (compared to my normal standards) to keep it aligned as the code grows. Especially, focused on end-to-end testing where I could easily enforce a specific behavior or user flow.Fresh is an open-source project (GPL-2) seeking early adopters. You're welcome to send feedback, feature requests, and bug reports.Website: https://sinelaw.github.io/fresh/GitHub Repository: https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh
HN · launched Dec 3, 2025 · 187 upvotes (top 6%) · 0 views
Niche: text and document editors · 95 launches, 7 in the last 7 days ▼ -46% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 95 launches in text and document editors →
Could you build this?
No Developing a performant terminal text editor in Rust with custom rendering, rope/gap-buffer data structures, mouse event handling, and Language Server Protocol (LSP) client support requires deep systems programming expertise that LLMs cannot reliably generate end-to-end.
What it would actually take: The system requires Rust using crossterm/ratatui or raw terminal escape sequences, a Piece Table or Rope data structure (like ropey) for high-performance text buffers, an asynchronous runtime (Tokio) for non-blocking I/O, and an LSP client implementation adhering to JSON-RPC specs. The hardest parts are sub-millisecond screen redraw optimization, flicker-free terminal rendering, tree-sitter syntax highlighting, and robust cross-platform terminal emulation handling.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Neovim, Kakoune, Helix, Lapce, VS Code
Concerns raised: Slow file opening (~20 seconds), High memory usage (4.7GB RAM), Missing LSP support features like Code Lenses, No LSP-sourced documentation display, GPL licensing creates legal risk for users
Feature requests: Add to cargo binstall for direct binary installation, Support file:line:column syntax in CLI, Add Code Lenses for Run/Debug options, Add F1 key binding for LSP documentation, Reduce Deno dependency
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 540 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #50 of 541 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 32 days after the earliest competitor.
- Hurry · hn · 2025-12-22 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- The Goal is simple, there should be an actual free editor · hn · 2026-07-31 · 20 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Ane, a new chord-based terminal code editor with one-shot CLI edits · hn · 2026-05-15 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- I made a Rust Terminal UI for OpenSnitch, a Linux application firewall · hn · 2025-11-21 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Optimizing LiteLLM with Rust · hn · 2025-11-18 · 27 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- CodeDiff · hn · 2026-09-29 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Ducklang: Achieving 100x more requests per second than NextJS · hn · 2026-01-01 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Github-workflow · ph · 2026-10-12 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.