vorto

A modal terminal text editor written in Rust. Tree-sitter syntax highlighting, Language Server Protocol support, fuzzy pickers, and optional GitHub Copilot — all in a single, dependency-light binary.

Highlights

• Vim-style modal editing with operators, motions, tree-sitter text objects, multi-cursor, jump labels, and .-repeat.
• Tree-sitter highlighting with on-demand grammar install — no tree-sitter-cli, no external repos to clone, no Node toolchain.
• First-class LSP: diagnostics, hover, completion, signature help, code actions, goto definition / declaration / implementation, references, rename, format-on-save.
• Optional Copilot via copilot-language-server — ghost-text inline completions when present, silent when not.
• Async architecture keeps the UI responsive while language servers index and grammars parse in the background.
• Git-aware out of the box: diff gutter, picker respects .gitignore, dirty-state indicator.
• Single static binary, pure Rust, no runtime dependencies beyond a C compiler for building grammars on demand.

Features

Editing

• Normal / Insert / Visual (char, line, block) / Command modes
• Operators: d y c > <
• Motions: h j k l, w b e W B E ge gE, f F t T ; ,, gg G H M L, { }, %, <C-f> <C-b> <C-d> <C-u>
• Search: / ?, n N, * #, gn gN
• Text objects: iw aw, i" a", i( a(, i{ a{, i[ a[, ip ap, plus tree-sitter-aware if af (function), ic ac (class), i, a, (parameter)
• Multi-cursor: + add next match, Shift-Down add below, - pop, <space>, clear
• Jump labels: gw (easymotion-style 2-char word jumps)
• Auto-pair brackets and quotes, language-aware comment toggle (<space>c), case toggle, line join, repeat with .
• Undo / redo (u / <C-r>), system clipboard yank/paste via arboard

Language Server Protocol

Servers and formatters ship with built-in defaults for the common languages (rust-analyzer, pyright, gopls, clangd, vtsls, and ~30 more). Override or add to them per-language in config.toml.

Tree-sitter

• Built-in grammar recipes for 37 languages: rust, python, go, javascript, typescript, tsx, toml, kotlin, c, cpp, java, bash, json, yaml, markdown, html, css, lua, ruby, zig, sql, dockerfile, make, hcl, diff, vue, svelte, haskell, elixir, nix, c-sharp, swift, php, dart, ocaml, graphql, fish.
• Install on demand — only the grammars you use are built and cached:

  vorto grammar list
  vorto grammar install rust python
  vorto grammar install --all
  vorto grammar install-queries rust
  vorto grammar remove rust
  

• Uses highlights.scm for coloring, indents.scm for auto-indent, and textobjects.scm for tree-sitter text objects.
• Falls back to plain text when a grammar is unavailable.

UI

• Fuzzy pickers with live syntax-highlighted preview:
  • Files — :e (git-aware)
  • Buffers — :ls / :buffers
  • Document symbols — <space><space> (LSP)
• File explorer tree on <space>e — navigate with j k l / arrows, toggle hidden files with ., toggle .gitignored files with h, filter with /, and create / delete / rename / move with a / d / r / m
• Splits: :split / :vsplit, <space>w h / <space>w v, cycle with <C-w w>
• Status bar with mode badge, filename, cursor position, dirty flag
• Configurable indentation guides (line / dot, skip levels)
• Mode-specific cursor shapes (block / bar / underline)
• Mouse support: click to move cursor, scroll to scroll
• Non-blocking toast notifications

AI (optional)

If copilot-language-server is on your PATH, vorto enables inline ghost-text completions: accept with <Tab>, dismiss with <Esc>. Missing the binary is a no-op — no errors, no prompts.

Git

• Diff gutter: + added, ~ modified, ⋮ deleted marker
• File picker honors .gitignore and your global excludes file
• Status bar surfaces buffer dirty state

Install

From crates.io:

cargo install vorto

From source:

git clone https://github.com/shka-k/vorto.git
cd vorto
make install            # installs to ~/.local/bin
# or
cargo build --release   # binary at target/release/vorto

Requires a Rust toolchain (edition 2024). A C compiler is needed when building tree-sitter grammars.

Usage

vorto [FILE]
vorto -h | --help
vorto -V | --version

Configuration

Configuration lives under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vorto/ (typically ~/.config/vorto/):

• config.toml — editor settings, keymap, theme, per-language LSP / formatter / indent overrides, and a [finder] table (hidden_patterns, max_items) controlling what the file picker and explorer treat as hidden
• grammars/ — installed tree-sitter .so libraries
• queries/<lang>/ — installed highlights.scm, indents.scm, textobjects.scm

See the documentation site for the full configuration reference.

License

Licensed under either of

• MIT License (LICENSE-MIT)
• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)

at your option.