Is Vim Still Relevant in the Age of AI?
How do you use Vim in the era of AI?
As a heavy Vim user, I find myself looking at code less and less thanks to AI tools. This shift makes me question whether sticking with Vim still makes sense today. I am wondering if the traditional workflow of manual editing is becoming obsolete when artificial intelligence can handle so much of the heavy lifting.
I'm a heavy vim user, but now that I look at the code less and less I'm wondering if it still makes sense.
- redlewel
How are you a heavy vim user if you wonder if vim makes sense with ai? There are so many things to do outside of writing code that vim is used for.
Also neovim + claude code + open terminal pane in tmux is the goated combo anyway. Especially more lately you need to understand the code you are writing if you want to do anything important in software, and the best way to do that is neovim :)
- anonymid
I wrote my own neovim AI harnesshttps://github.com/dlants/magenta.nvim
And wrote about my thoughts on the relevance of nvim here https://dlants.me/ai-whiplash.html
It's been many months, and I thoroughly prefer my harness inside of nvim as my day to day development environment. Using Claude code or cursor makes me feel very removed from the code.
Exploring code, gathering context and tweaking prompts/giving guidance to the agent are very much enhanced by neovim.
The biggest boon has been the fact that agents make customizing neovim a lot easier. Writing new bindings, config, and even building novel plugins.
Here's a few that I built that fit into my workflow:
- a tool for reviewing commits / branches / wip. https://github.com/dlants/glean
- an iterative grepper https://github.com/dlants/shuck
- a file picker that renders in your current window (like oil) and uses more intelligent signals for ranking (like frecency) https://github.com/dlants/needle
- MantisShrimp90
(Neo)vim is setup wonderfully for this era. Im with Justin on the take that neovim can replace tmux soon literally all that is left is being able to restart terminal sessions on restart (which is even set as a goal for summer of code).
Neovim can already have all the agents running in different terminal buffers or there are plugins popping up every day to have deep integrations with your favorite or we even have some interesting harnesses that are unique to neovim like sidekick.
As always, the ability to compose small tools and edit any file allow neovim to stay relevant and more powerful than ever in my opinion while not forcing workflow changes like the others
- wffurr
Use it to write and edit code when that makes sense for you to do so. Just like you always have. It's an extremely useful skill to have even still.
I've had much more success with agents reviewing my code and offering inline autocomplete over LSP than I have with letting the agents write the code, which I then try to review. I end up with a much better mental model of the code and higher quality output than either I or the agent could do alone.
- Leonard_of_Q
"how do you use an ax in the age of AI"
Exactly the same as I used it on the age of frameworks, the age of Java and .NET, the age of compilers, the age of ...: you take it by the helve and swing the business end towards the object.