Scribe

Vim-flavoured modal editor with the parts a writer actually needs and a few features vim never had. Single static binary, sub-10 ms startup, soft-wrap by default, Claude Code in the editor, syntax highlighting, hunspell spellcheck, Goyo-style reading mode, persistent registers shared across sessions.

Why scribe (and not vim)?

Vim has a thousand features. A writer needs about thirty of them. Scribe is "vim minus 90 % minus the programming subsystem, plus a handful of writer-first niceties":

• Modal core — hjkl, motions, operators, text-objects, registers, marks, macros, dot-repeat, undo tree.
• Soft-wrap by default — long prose lines wrap at the pane edge with a continuation indicator. Live resize via SIGWINCH.
• Claude integration in the prompt — :claude {prompt} runs claude -p over your selection / paragraph / buffer and splices the response back. One u reverses an entire turn. :chat for full interactive sessions.
• Reading mode — :read (or zr) for Goyo-style centered text, optional Limelight-style paragraph dim. Prose without chrome.
• Email-mode rendering — .eml files and kastrup compose tempfiles get header / quote-level / signature colors that match kastrup's right pane 1-for-1. Inline email addresses + URLs highlighted everywhere.
• Syntax highlighting for ~18 source languages plus dedicated HyperList / Markdown / LaTeX renderers via the shared highlight crate. Multi-line block comments and string literals keep their color across line breaks.
• Spellcheck via hunspell — auto-on for email mode, opt-in elsewhere via :set spell. Configurable language and underline color. ]s / [s navigation, z= suggestions, zg to add to personal dict.
• Persistent registers — yanks and macros live in ~/.config/scribe/registers.json and update on every yank, so they survive restarts AND share live across concurrent scribe sessions.
• No LSP / debugger / quickfix / :make — writers don't compile.
• Block paste that actually pastes a block — Ctrl-v selection lays each row at the same column on consecutive lines. One u reverses the whole thing.