Likho

Likho is a small, focused terminal text editor built with Bun and OpenTUI. It opens quickly, uses familiar VS Code-style shortcuts and Quick Open, highlights source code with Tree-sitter, and treats saving your work as the feature that must never be clever.

Likho is early software. Today it keeps one active file at a time, not a tabbed IDE workspace.

Try it

Run Likho through npm. npm installs the standalone binary for your operating system and CPU:

npx likho@latest README.md

To install the command globally:

npm install --global likho
likho README.md

You need Node.js 18 or newer to install through npm, but you do not need Bun: the installed editor is a self-contained executable. npm selects one optional native package for macOS, glibc or musl Linux, or Windows on ARM64 and x64. The same executables remain available from GitHub Releases.

Passing a path that does not exist opens an empty buffer and creates the file when you save it. Passing a folder opens workspace mode with the Explorer focused; passing a file keeps the UI file-only.

likho .

What works today

• Single-file editing in a full-screen terminal UI
• Line-number gutter, mouse-wheel scrolling, selection, undo, and redo
• Workspace Quick Open with fuzzy file matching and a searchable command palette
• Lazy filesystem Explorer for folder launches, with keyboard and mouse navigation
• Tree-sitter syntax highlighting selected from the file extension
• Prettier formatting selected from the file extension
• Unicode-aware highlight columns and visible tab characters
• Dirty-state, cursor-position, encoding, and shortcut indicators
• OSC 52 clipboard copy and cut when supported by the terminal
• Safe saves that refuse to overwrite a file changed by another process
• Save / Don't Save / Cancel confirmation before closing an unsaved document
• Graceful SIGHUP, SIGINT, and SIGTERM shutdown
• Built-in commands, keybindings, and highlighting behind a small lifecycle-managed plugin host

Keybindings

Mod means Command on macOS and Ctrl on Linux and Windows.

| Action | Shortcut | | --- | --- | | Save | Mod+S | | Quick Open | Mod+P | | Command palette | Mod+Shift+P, or type > at the start of Quick Open | | Show Explorer / toggle focus | Mod+Shift+E | | Toggle Explorer visibility | Mod+B | | Close | Mod+W or Ctrl+Q | | Copy | Mod+C | | Cut | Mod+X | | Select all | Mod+A | | Undo | Mod+Z | | Redo | Mod+Shift+Z; Ctrl+Y also works outside macOS | | Delete line | Mod+Shift+K | | Format document | Shift+Option+F on macOS, Shift+Alt+F elsewhere | | Start/end of visual line | Home / End | | Select to start/end of visual line | Shift+Home / Shift+End | | Start/end of document | Command+Up/Down on macOS, Ctrl+Home/End elsewhere | | Insert a tab | Tab |

If the document is dirty, closing opens a Save / Don't Save / Cancel dialog. Opening another file uses the same two-step confirmation and keeps the picker open until confirmed. In the Explorer, arrows move and expand/collapse rows, Enter opens or toggles the selected row, and Escape returns focus to the editor. Clicking a file opens it, clicking a folder toggles it, and the mouse wheel scrolls the tree.

Current limits

• A platform package is roughly 27–48 MB compressed; its installed executable currently occupies roughly 77–134 MB, depending on the target.
• One file is active at a time. There are no tabs, splits, multi-root workspaces, or settings UI yet.
• The Explorer appears only for folder launches and does not yet watch, create, rename, or delete files.
• Files larger than 900,000 bytes or 100,000 lines are rejected while OpenTUI's buffer export is limited.
• Syntax highlighting parses the whole document but paints only the viewport plus 10 overscan lines; it is disabled above 200,000 bytes until edits can be sent incrementally.
• Formatting is explicit and available for supported files, but may pause the UI on larger documents.
• Clipboard support depends on the terminal accepting OSC 52.
• The plugin host currently organizes trusted built-ins. It does not load third-party code.

See ROADMAP.md for the planned path beyond these constraints.

Development

bun install
bun run start -- README.md

Before sending a change:

bun test
bun run typecheck
bun run build

The normal build writes the Bun entry point to dist/index.js. To make the minified standalone executable used by releases for your current platform:

bun build --compile --minify src/index.ts --outfile dist/likho
./dist/likho README.md

bun run release:build cross-compiles every supported executable into dist/release and generates the npm wrapper plus its eight platform packages in dist/npm. The release workflow publishes the native packages first and likho last, so users never receive a wrapper whose exact-version binary is missing. See docs/RELEASING.md for the tag flow and one-time npm bootstrap.

If a package manager disables install scripts, run node postinstall.mjs inside its installed likho directory or reinstall without --ignore-scripts.

Project layout

src/index.ts                  process signals and exit status
src/cli.ts                    argument validation and CLI results
src/document.ts               document state and safe-save rules
src/editor-session.ts         OpenTUI session and capability adapters
src/explorer-source.ts        lazy local-filesystem Explorer adapter
src/explorer-tree.ts          headless Explorer state and navigation
src/quick-input.ts            Quick Open state, cancellation, selection, and acceptance
src/workspace-files.ts        Git-aware workspace file discovery with a Bun fallback
src/plugins/                  built-in commands, palette UI, chrome, gutter, formatting, and highlighting
npm/                          generated-package installer and ignored-script fallback
test/                         document, CLI, session, packaging, and lifecycle tests
docs/                         design and technology research

The editor core owns document safety and terminal lifecycle. Built-ins receive narrow capabilities for commands, keybindings, syntax decorations, and status messages; OpenTUI-only UI built-ins are composed with explicit render dependencies. The Explorer plugin receives a narrow ExplorerSource adapter and still opens files only through the editor action boundary. This keeps today's implementation small while preserving a credible seam for future isolation.

Status

Likho is pre-1.0 and its interfaces may change. Bug reports and focused contributions are welcome at github.com/talhabalaj/likho.