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