18 ms·

Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

782 points by kgwgk 1y ago

cristea 1y ago
Pretty cool! I love that these battle proven editors (emacs and (n)vim) seem to follow along with new technology, even though one might think overwise given their age. I hope this comes to vim as well!
- helsinki 1y ago
  It’s more common that they lead technological advancements in IDEs, not follow. Neovim in particular.
- benreesman 1y ago
  Neovim and to an extent emacs are where corporate IDE vendors go for ideas. From ergonomics of the UX, performance, portability, design sense (!!) and theming? It's like Sun and GNU in the 90s. Those UI/UX folks getting pissed their perfect HSL wheel and black balance got dicked with by some PM which is why the GitHub theme is great not legendary? They go home and rice Arch or NixOS and just shit on the dayjob stuff. These people are artists, and hacks follow. edit: My black balance is calculated on a per-display basis with an HSL-space transform from a hero color by the same NixOS module tree that builds the background from it's own source code as SVG and renders it before downsampling it for the specific display it's on. Of like two people helping beta it, both said roughly "using another desktop is like using the screen at the ATM". DHH is doing something similar with Arch, he's not quite as far along but this is the future. https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936c070fa56.png https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936c070fa56.png https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936d79c607c.png https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936d79c607c.png
  - bevr1337 1y ago
    You must understand that a screenshot of your black balance cannot translate to another screen?
    - benreesman 1y ago
      I do understand that. I was just illustrating that it's possible to do very holistically integrated desktops programmatically and in a way where you can do some math once and leverage it again. I'm personally a fan of `ono-sendai-blue`, but I have a friend in a defense adjacent space and I gather `ono-sendai-tactical` is enjoyed there. The blacks in these reference palettes are a reasonable starting point for many displays, you'll want to hint for your specific one to get optimal outcomes. https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a079 https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a07... https://gist.github.com/b7r6/fbbfb1cf2a3d14927bbe621a9050522f https://gist.github.com/b7r6/fbbfb1cf2a3d14927bbe621a9050522...
      - bevr1337 1y ago
        Thank you for clarifying. I opened that screenshot prepared to be amazed by blackness... My mistake ;)
        benreesman 1y ago
        Haha, no worries friend. I find it's just totally counter-intuitive how much difference a little configuration makes relative to the cost of the monitor. Even a relatively inexpensive monitor (I've got like a 200 dollar gaming one that's like an Acer Predator clone and it just looked awful but tuned up it looks great, not as good as my real LG panel but still really good). I never really thought of monitors as something that need a bunch of tuning, but it really makes your dollar go further to get the black balance and subpixel hinting and stuff dialed in. For someone like me who can't afford to just go buy an Apple XDR on a whim, it's worth it.
  - chaoskanzlerin 1y ago
    >stellarwind That sure is a choice of name for your project!
    - benreesman 1y ago
      Ha, it's a working title. The name I want for what this will become is `straylight v4`, but that name belongs to a friend, and it has to be a worthy successor to earn being called that. :)
  - komali2 1y ago
    I don't really understand what you're talking about but it sounds cool. Naive question: what's wrong with just #000000 as black? I often change blacks to that in "dark mode" themes that are actually just dark grey. I want BLACK!
    - benreesman 1y ago
      Yeah, I also like being able to get real blacks, and certain kinds of panels can do it (I'm not an expert on panels by any means but I think this is one of the bigger selling points of the OLED family of panel designs is that they can turn off a pixel completely, which let's them get an infinite contrast ratio and therefore pure blacks). But on a lot of displays (including a couple of the ones I use all the time) the panel can't really do it well, and so there are all kinds of hinting and cheats and other workarounds, and so to get perceptual black, you actually wind up cranking the lum up a little, and that's what I've tried to do with the baseline Ono-Sendai Hypermodern blacks, is give a range of options starting from absolute black, and going up incrementally to GitHub "black"/darkest which is a very expertly designed grayscale (their designers on this are world class), but it's light, it's really high to cope with just about any panel. If you want to try it out, you can pop these codes into whatever way you set colors: https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a079 https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a07... The "Ono-Sendai Memphis" grayscale starts at #000000.
  - L0Wigh 1y ago
    What's that font ?
    - benreesman 1y ago
      Berkeley Mono, which I highly recommend if you're into that sort of thing. It's finnicky, has to be hinted right. But the ligatures and stuff are pretty unrivaled IMHO. I think it's like 100 bucks or something, but I bought it once 10 years ago and the license is still good, so it's got an amortization schedule that makes it a perfectly sensible part of a toolbox for a professional if you like myself find it more legible and pleasant than most alternatives.
- anonymid 1y ago
  magenta nvim implements a really nice integration of coding agents.
brotherjerky 1y ago
Anyone have good results with something similar for Neovim?
- greymalik 1y ago
  https://github.com/greggh/claude-code.nvim https://github.com/greggh/claude-code.nvim https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim
  - bikeshaving 1y ago
    I tried these, and they seem to mainly be opening Claude Code in a pane in Vim, along with commands to open the pane. It’s missing the features added to the Emacs version like open file awareness, access to text selection, and integrated diff for changes. It would be really interesting to see a version which exposes Vim as an MCP. I would love to see Claude Code work on the active file, reading from open buffers, typing Vim motions, and taking advantage of Vim features like find/replace and macros. It would be closer to the real pair programming experience, whereas the read and write experience is slow and disjointed from editing.
    - ThomasK33 1y ago
      Hello, I'm the maintainer of the coder/claudecode.nvim plugin. This plugin does indeed support that functionality. It implements an MCP server using pure Lua and Neovim primitives. It not only notifies Claude Code about the currently open file and selected lines in a file, but also opens diff views whenever Claude Code attempts to make a file change.
- softwaredoug 1y ago
  I just like having a neovim terminal open with claude code open
  - helsinki 1y ago
    I think that’s a decent approach, but doesn’t the performance of a Neovim terminal bother you? It simply does not feel as good as a native terminal pane. It’s not as bad as VSCode’s terminal pane, but it still leaves something to be desired.
rurban 1y ago
Looks better than my current Claude Sonnet integration via copilot.
pjm331 1y ago
love the ability to add tools to the mcp server - would expect nothing less from emacs :) as a long time emacs user i've only recently started really writing my own elisp tools, but claude is pretty good at writing elisp so i've been doing more there (sometimes it loses track of parentheses and you need to fix that, but overall pretty good) I'll def be trying this out alongside steve yegge's efrit which kicks the emacs up to 11 by letting the agent just write and evaluate arbitrary elisp expressions https://github.com/steveyegge/efrit https://github.com/steveyegge/efrit
- benreesman 1y ago
  I'm a long time Yegge fan and follower and while I think he's still in the vibe code honeymoon phase and hasn't had the vibe code hangover yet, his bona fides on emacs are up there with anyones. It was my observation around 12-18 momths ago that LLMs are weirdly good at elisp (which kicked off all the // hypermodern stuff I'm doing. I think he's onto something with efrit, I havent gotten it dialed yet but its reaaallyy promising.
vemv 1y ago
I'm happily using https://github.com/stevemolitor/claude-code.el https://github.com/stevemolitor/claude-code.el which is a mere terminal wrapper (including a nifty Transient menu). But just by virtue of running inside Emacs you get a lot of power - it didn't take me a lot of effort to create an efficient, customized workflow that felt much more streamlined than my older iTerm usage. I'll keep an eye on this new offering though. There's also https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca-emacs https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca-emacs which comes from the author of clojure-lsp, a very popular package within the Clojure community. I'd also been wanting to try it. For both of the more advanced offerings, I tend to be a little cautious when adopting tools I'm trusting my productivity to. Most ambitious projects need to iron out misc stuff during their 'big bang' phase.
- mijoharas 1y ago
  I tried that for a bit, and bounced back to just using claude code in a terminal. It was a little bit janky in emacs, and didn't have any features that justified not just running a separate terminal window (for me, at the time I checked it out). I'm wondering if this project will work. It does feel a shame that it doesn't work with the existing mcp.el package[0], but I never got around to setting that up anyways. I wonder if it's a limitation of the package? or not wanting another dependency? (in addition I've only really played around with claude code a little because I haven't gotten it to a place where I can make it write code I'd consider acceptable for my day job.) [0] https://github.com/lizqwerscott/mcp.el https://github.com/lizqwerscott/mcp.el
  - yogsototh 1y ago
    I personally have great success with gptel + mcp + claude (via copilot due to corporate restrictions) I wrote a short article about how I configured it there: https://her.esy.fun/posts/0029-ai-assistants-in-doom-emacs-31-on-macos-with-clojure-mcp-server/index.html https://her.esy.fun/posts/0029-ai-assistants-in-doom-emacs-3... One thing I really appreciate with gptel is that it is very easy to switch from Claude to something else like a local llm (via ollama or gpt4all for example). And the interface will be similar.
blahgeek 1y ago
Like LSP and tree-sitter, I think AI coding tools like Claude Code or Aider are very good news for niche editors like Emacs or Vim. Instead of struggling about implementing advanced IDE-like features, they can integrate with these tools relatively easily, and focus on other editing related features that set them apart. In fact, IMO it makes these editors more competitive because they are highly customizable and easier to integrate with these tools.
- mikece 1y ago
  Is there a standard for integrating agentic coding tools into an editor similar to how an LSP allows the integration of language-specific features?
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Its not at anything like the adoption of MCP or especially LSP, and it takes a more "foundational and composable library of primitives" approach than "wire protocol per se" approach, but `gptel` has quite the vibrant little ecosystem around it and its just god mode, wall hacks on the VSCode stuff, just blows it away. I'm under extreme time pressure at the moment, I cannot afford to fuck around on ideology right now I have to go for the jugular every day, and that means "fuck the cost" Opus 4 use in `gptel` (though Qwen and K2 are pushing it out of more and more stuff as I learn the quirks, Opus 4 TTFT under load is unusable and when it starts fighting you on clean merge boundaries because its personality vector has been set to "token stingy" its strictly worse). Its not that I dislike Cursor, its that I dont have time to put up with its compromises for non-extreme-power-user accessibility. I need an extreme power, cost indifferent, tuned for the margins stack. That's nothing with a VSCode base that I know about, and I've tried Cline and Roo and Continue and written a bunch MCP servers and I measure it all, not even close. I bet the neovim people have something just as good.
    - ljm 1y ago
      My 'beef' with Cursor is that the editor is part of the package and you don't really have the same kind of hooks into the agent that you do with Claude Code or similar, which really means you're at the mercy of the Cursor team to prioritise those things on their roadmap. That includes things like the limit of 40 MCP tools that you can only enable globally (and MCP proxies that try to do this dynamically are a bit flakey) - even just using the GitHub MCP blows through that limit because it's all or nothing. It's good for what it is but I don't love that I have to change to a whole-ass new editor to get access to the agentic additions, when alternatives that require an API key or a more flexible CLI tool can do a better job.
neutronicus 1y ago
I've tried out a similar project (claude-code.el). I use Spacemacs in evil-mode and I found it very frustrating to try and type into the Claude Code text box (often my cursor would be somewhere weird, the terminal emulator just really did not seem to "understand" that I was not in Insert Mode). I wound up deciding that I'd rather just use Claude Code in the terminal. The Claude Code text box is ALSO annoying there, so I often just write out instructions in some file (in emacs) and tell then tell CC to read it. Does this project have any facilities for authoring prompts in a temporary buffer or something?
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
  I tried it and it has similar problems. Claude Code is not a good "citizen" embedded elsewhere as it wants to control the terminal completely. I use default emacs keybindings, which are a bit friendlier with this since they're similar to the bash/readline keybindings it uses... but it's still jarring.
- celeritascelery 1y ago
  I have also been using Claude-code.el and agree that the terminal emulators can struggle to integrate well with my regular workflow. What I have been doing is typing my prompt in the scratch buffer or minibuffer and then sending it to Claude with Claude-code-send-command (bound to s in the transient menu). I don’t even need to switch to the Claude code buffer to send it.
- mijoharas 1y ago
  I think I basically had the same experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813189
- komali2 1y ago
  I also had the spacemacs golden handcuffs on before I switched to nvim. I worry that while using spacemacs was great for getting me up to speed in a productive emacs environment, it hamstrung my long term understanding and usage of emacs. I'd often have issues like you describe with no idea how to solve it. My white whale was getting all my web dev major modes to respect a .editorconfig.
mikece 1y ago
I apologize for my ignorance in asking this question but is Emacs considered an IDE? I thought that was a term reserved for large, graphical editors like IntelliJ, Eclipse, or Visual Studio.
- mosburger 1y ago
  Queue the old adage ... "Emacs is a great operating system, what it needs is a good editor." I'm not sure there is a rigid enough definition of IDE to say whether Emacs qualifies or not. I think it does by virtue of its extensibility, but I could definitely see a legit argument that it's merely an editor because it doesn't have a lot of the tooling of something more modern. I think what you consider to be an IDE (IntelliJ, VS, etc) is something that didn't exist until modern GUIs. Prior to that, terminal based things like Emacs (or LSE on VMS) were the closest analog.
  - gjvc 1y ago
    "Cue"
    - iLemming 1y ago
      A pro tip - add a clause in your LLM prompt to randomly misspell words, so people can't blame you for an aislopper. :)
  - mikece 1y ago
    I realize my definition is purely subjective in that I deal with Visual Studio and VS Code almost exclusively and that the VS Code team is instant that they make an editor and not IDE. For me an IDE has graphical tools for building UIs and other workflow items as well as language-specific compilers and tools built in. Like I said, subjective based on my experience (and my experience doesn't include Emacs).
    - skydhash 1y ago
      Emacs is a text environment (which can also display images). It can also launch process and have IPC built in. So everything that works with text can be brought into emacs. And often, the only advantages of GUI is animation and aesthetics (to appeal to beginner). Text interfaces can be more productive.
jact 1y ago
This is profaning the temple of St iGNUcius
apwell23 1y ago
claude team unfortunately didn't make it easy for anyone to build their own. Take a look at this if you are hoping to build your own ide integration https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/PROTOCOL.... https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/ARCHITECTURE.md https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/ARCHITECT...
cml123 1y ago
Lately I've been seeing a lot of derision from the Emacs community of the consideration for integrating these kinds of tools with Emacs, but I truly think that's much more hurtful than helpful. Although the current development and usage of AI in software development may not closely resemble the techniques used at the time, it seems to me that Emacs' history is inextricably linked to the MIT AI Lab. It feels weird then that people today would shun the inclusion of AI integration into a tool that was produced from such a working group.
- paddy_m 1y ago
  This is due to Richard Stalllman. He thinks that integrating "non-free" alternatives when free alternatives don't yet exist slows down free software development. Not just free as in freedom alternatives, not just free as in GPL licensed, but free as in FSF controlled projects. He did the same thing with linking extensions to GCC, LLVM debugger integration into emacs (fuzzy on that one), possibly treesitter into emacs, bzr vs git for emacs code source control, and a CI build farm for emacs. In each one of those cases, he eventually relented and the core project, eventually integrated the non-free alternative years later. In the meantime this delaying didn't stop the non-free alternatives, but it did slow down adoption of the core project. This is attrocious project management that is driving people to non-free software. In the most egregious cases (bzr and CI build farm), it was done only because of his ego and wanting the FSF to matter.
  - qiine 1y ago
    this is just sad
  - benreesman 1y ago
    A lot of us are grateful in some abstract way for all the foundational work RMS did both technically and organizationally to preserve what remaining software freedoms we still have, but got off the bus a long time ago. He got really weird and it was on some "no fly zone" shit. There's an `emacs` community that recognizes the history without being involved in any contemporary sense.
hit8run 1y ago
I want something like this for helix!
yoyohello13 1y ago
I’ve always thought emacs is the ultimate editor for AI agents. The agent has so much access to the state of the editor itself and can even easily change editor behavior with elisp. I feel like editors which expose the level of customization like vim and emacs could potentially have a huge advantage.
- iLemming 1y ago
  > vim and emacs could potentially have a huge advantage. They always have had. It just depends on what people perceive to be advantageous. For me, VSCode's and IntelliJ's closed model for extensibility is a huge downside. By "closed" I mean - restrictive plugin APIs, sandboxed execution environment, corporate gatekeeping, opaque core, etc. I don't even try to "shop for more features" anymore, learning Emacs allows me to remain "goal-oriented", and more often than not, it enables me to get the shit done in a far more satisfactory manner. Meanwhile, almost every time I switch to IDEs, I hit some limitations. It's not even "skill-issue" or unfamiliarity, I do remember my days of using IntelliJ, of which I was a devoted user for almost a decade. The way how I solve problems with Emacs, is just not even close.
  - smaudet 1y ago
    I went (10 years ago) JetBrains because of emacs. Back then, they were the Kool Kid in town that made emacs-style functionality more accessible. More and more they've become just another IDE with too-much-to-do. Still one of (the?) best, but as soon as your editor becomes impractical to use to edit a text file... (because it really just likes to work on projects...). But yeah, emacs remains functional in a way that JetBrains...probably won't. I'm already more than several years behind on their releases because they stopped putting a decent product...
    - iLemming 1y ago
      Oh boy, I was such a jetbrains kiddo, I can't even tell you. I had posters on my wall with keybinding and commands cheat sheets, I knew people working for JetBrains by their names, I talked to them regularly, it almost felt like we were on the same team. I tried to debug and understand plugins, even wanted to develop one, but somehow never got to do that - the hacking mindset of a habitual programmer just wasn't there yet - I kinda went with the status quo - "if IntelliJ doesn't have this feature, maybe I don't even need to know about it..." I've discovered and reported so many bugs on YouTrack, I still receive updates on them, even today - some of them date to 2009, things that JetBrains never even tried to improve since then. WebStorm was probably the biggest reason why it took me so long to switch to Emacs. My biggest fear was that if I invested in learning Emacs, and at some point I'd inevitably find that something simply couldn't be done in it, and I'd be forced to go back and my idyllic life would be ruined. God, how wrong I was. Not only have I found _everything_ I needed, I actually discovered radically different ways of solving problems. In the end, turns out one thing jetbrains did right - they have nailed the marketing - I surrendered without resistance. My biggest regret is not trying out Emacs sooner. I wish someone very persuasive showed me things I did not know were possible. That's why I get very vocal about it - kids have zero idea what they'd be missing.
InstaTunnel 1y ago
[dead]
eulers_secret 1y ago
I wonder if this can work with OpenCode (Claude Code fork which allows for other model providers: https://github.com/sst/opencode https://github.com/sst/opencode)? I really don't like being tied to a particular provider or model, switching models has been really helpful to get past blocks and save money (especially with Deepseek!). And, of course, I need to use Github Copilot's Open AI-compatile API at work...
- bbsss 1y ago
  Note that there are several projects on GitHub that let you proxy an openai compatible server and set it as ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL Got some good success with GLM-4.5-Air running locally recently. Still mainly using claude code max though.
- pxc 1y ago
  OpenCode isn't a fork of Claude Code. It's descended from an independent open-source project that was called "TermAI": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483338
r_murphey 1y ago
This is the way.
wyuenho 1y ago
While I'm happy that simultaneously there are at least 5 known Emacs/Claude Code integration packages, with seemingly 2 or 3 battling it out on Reddit and elsewhere, I feel like the best implemented one is the quiet one that no one has ever talked about. https://github.com/yuya373/claude-code-emacs https://github.com/yuya373/claude-code-emacs <- it literally implements every feature that every other ones have.
- celeritascelery 1y ago
  It doesn’t look like that had the /ide integration that Claude-code-ide has
  - wyuenho 1y ago
    It absolutely does. Give it a try.
    - celeritascelery 1y ago
      I just tried it. It does not support /ide integration. You can test this by typing /ide in claude code. MCP support is not the same thing as IDE support.
      - wyuenho 1y ago
        Oh you mean something like active file awareness and selection context? This code seems quite well architected and has websockets well integrated, both features sound like a lunch break’s worth of work if you file a ticket. Other than that, I couldn’t care less about how these capabilities are implemented or whether /ide works.
- kgwgk 1y ago
  I don't know how popular it is but it may be the easiest one to install: https://melpa.org/#/claude-code https://melpa.org/#/claude-code
- coldbrew583 1y ago
qalmakka 1y ago
my biggest issue with agents in neovim or emacs is that I also use emacs and neovim to open or edit sensitive data (like ssh keys, etc) that I don't want to upload to a random LLM. A quick solution I devised is to use bubblewrap to get a fully separate instance of nvim. Something along the lines of alias lvim "bwrap --bind / / --bind $HOME/.config/{lazy,n}vim --bind $HOME/.local/share/{lazy,n}vim --proc /proc --dev /dev nvim" works great (note: fish alias)
- bicx 1y ago
  I believe many of these agents will not operate on files included in a gitignored file, which helps with sensitive assets like .env files. Definitely worth confirming. Either way, don’t open such a file and ask the agent questions about it. It’ll likely process it either way.
  - Keyframe 1y ago
    gemini CLI won't, but will if you ask it to.. so what are the guaranteed one of it's internal thinking steps doesn't do the same?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ericdallo 1y ago
Give it a try to https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca, I'm focusing on make the best tool for ai pair programming in Emacs
riskassessment 1y ago
Gptel has been working great for me. I'd be interested in checking this out but I only have so much time to set up and test new tools. What features would make it worthwhile to switch from gptel?
- iLemming 1y ago
  You don't "switch" from gptel as this package solves a problem of a different dimension. Gptel is still great for tons of other things, even though it's not suitable for "project context-wise" LLM workflows.
  - azkae 1y ago
    I am using macher for small edits on a codebase with gptel: https://github.com/kmontag/macher https://github.com/kmontag/macher The package define a list of tools that gptel can use to inspect and edit a project. The tools are packaged as a preset so all you have to do is add "@macher" to your prompt to include the tools & update the system directive.
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
I'm really glad that emacs is integrating modern tooling like LSP and tree-sitter, now Claude Code, but this approach is showing its age. I'm an emacs user of 20 years and honestly it's getting hard to configure everything these days. Claude Code before the IDE integration was actually the easiest thing to get working (since it just worked and then auto-revert-mode keeps my buffers in sync.) I'm on a new MacOS install for $WORK trying to get lsp and ts work with a Typescript/Go repo and after some $PATH wonkiness (my default shell is not the same shell as the one that emacs launches in) got typescript-ls working but gopls is still having issues being downloaded. I haven't spent the hour or two it would probably take to figure out why the in-built downloader can't put gopls in the right place. I'm curious what emacs users are doing these days. I'm using Zed right now and really enjoying it but it's really hard to give up 20 years of emacs and I do love how emacs can scale from small one-off config file editing to huge projects and I love how configurable it is. Is neovim better in this space? Should I be learning how to debug elisp better to understand how the commands interact with my environment? I've been using emacs keybindings (in Dvorak at that) for so long I don't know if I'd enjoy the neovim editing experience.
- antipaul 1y ago
  In macOS, I use the GUI Emacs from https://emacsformacosx.com/ https://emacsformacosx.com/ Perhaps if you solve shell issues there once, they will stick.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    I'm running Homebrew's GUI Emacs which inherits from its opening shell. If I run GUI emacs from my shell then it inherits the environment of the shell so that seems to be doing okay. I'm quite busy outside of work right now so I'll probably take a crack at this in a few weeks, but it's also dismaying how annoying it is to manage all the ts and lsp dependencies to make my projects work, let alone pointing the lsp to use the right package.json or go path or other things. I have no doubt that, in time, I can whack-a-mole the issues down. It does reduce my confidence in changing my environment because of how brittle the stack is. That's what makes me curious about the rest of the ecosystem. Zed mostly works though I have had to configure it to use project-specific linter configs using somewhat underdocumented settings files. I'm curious if neovim is easier to get working because it's a smaller beast so easier to debug, but I also just don't know if I'd enjoy a switch to few-key modal editing from the chorded emacs style I love.
megaloblasto 1y ago
This is awesome. I love emacs and I love integrating AI into my coding work flow. What I really want is to be able to run something like this locally for, say, less than $2000 in computer hardware. Is this feasible now or any time soon. Anyone out there using agents with local models for coding?
- iLemming 1y ago
  gptel supports all sorts of models, including localized ones.
- calebkaiser 1y ago
  There's a lot of great work both around supporting memory efficient inference (like on a closer-to-consumer machine), as well as on open source code-focused models. A lot of people are excited about the Qwen3-Coder family of models: https://huggingface.co/collections/Qwen/qwen3-coder-687fc861e53c939e52d52d10 https://huggingface.co/collections/Qwen/qwen3-coder-687fc861... For running locally, there are tools like Ollama and LM Studio. Your hardware needs will fluctuate depending on what size/quantization of model you try to run, but 2k in hardware cost is reasonable for running a lot of models. Some people have good experiences using the M-series Macs, which is probably a good bang-for-buck if you're exclusively interested in inference. I'd recommend checking out the LocalLlamas subreddit for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ Getting results on par with big labs isn't feasible, but if you prefer to run everything locally, it is a fun and doable project.
  - megaloblasto 1y ago
    Awesome. Great info, thanks Is this just a fun project for now, or could I actually benefit from it in terms of software production like I do with tools like claude code? I am interested in carefully tailoring it to specific projects, integrating curated personal notes, external documentation, scientific papers, etc via RAG (this part I've already written), and carefully chosing the tools available to the agent. If I hand tailor the AI agents to each project, can I expect to get something perhaps similar to the performance boost of Claude code for $2000 (USD)? If not $2000, then how much would I need? I'm pretty sure for something like $75000 I could do this with a large deep seek model locally, and certainly get something very close to claude code, right?
wwarner 1y ago
This is great, and I need it and will use it, but what I need even more is some kind of integration with org mode (or just note taking generally). I found out the hard way that github/copilot deletes conversations after 30 days! So much for building a knowledge base with an AI assistant! I really need something a bit like Goog's `notebookllm` for capturing research, except I'd like to control it locally.
- radarsat1 1y ago
  There is ob-aider, maybe interesting for you to try. https://github.com/emacsmirror/ob-aider https://github.com/emacsmirror/ob-aider
- banjomonster 1y ago
  Try gptel-mode - your chats are in org buffers, and you can save/restore sessions easily. Also plays nicely with mcp.el for more tooling access.
  - JohnKemeny 1y ago
    gptel-mode (I have it at C-c L) is great!
epistasis 1y ago
See also this other integration of Claude Code for emacs: https://github.com/cpoile/claudemacs https://github.com/cpoile/claudemacs
crat3r 1y ago
I feel like I still have yet to see any decent answers to this question; Are professional SDE paying for Claude on their own dime, and then logging into their personal account and somehow integrating Claude Code (or other LLMs) into their work repos that way? The startup I work for has chosen their flavor of AI subscription and its frankly not developer focused. Instead they chose Google because of the productivity tools in the Google App suite. I want to try Claude Code but the reality is that I don't want to be the martyr that tells my team lead that I want to see if AI can do (parts of) my job for me. It feels pretty sketchy or maybe even completely wrong to use something like this on a company repo I don't own without permissions, so I haven't done it. I suppose I will just have to continue to wonder if the agentic coding services are smoke and mirrors because I somehow don't know anyone who has used them extensively either and I have no clue when I will be able to use one with the strings attached of it being on a free-tier...
- ceuk 1y ago
  Yes I pay for the most expensive Claude sub with my own money and use it at work. I also have to use it via a proxy server I set up to get around the corporate firewall which explicitly blocks it. The company like the results but wouldn't like how I get them.. More corporate ridiculousness
- komali2 1y ago
  Our company set up some kind of Wise debit card thing where we each get our own number, and they told us "try out any AI tool you want." So I subscribe to a new one every month to try out while still shoveling like 150$/mo at Claude cause it's consistently been the best and the one I use the most. Cursor as well has been good for their completion model which surpasses anything else I've tried for inline/multiline/jump completions. But I've also tried supermaven, codeium/windsurf, copilot, zed. I guess from the company's perspective, a couple hundred bucks a month is well worth the time of keeping us all up to date with ai tooling.
xvfLJfx9 1y ago
I hope one day we can have the same thing for the helix editor.
asawfofor 1y ago
Might SWE agents converge on an inclusive set of APIs that Editors and IDEa could adapt to?
eschaton 1y ago
Unfortunate to see more of this horseshit.
submeta 1y ago
I love(d) Emacs a lot a few years ago. Until my job and obligations didn’t leave me much room for tinkering. There is an inverse relationship between tinkering and getting things done. Although LLMs changed the game: These days I leave the tinkering to Claude Code. And can change every aspect of my tools within seconds. No waste of time, max output. But I still moved away. why? Because I believe the Emacs way is wrong. And here’s why: If I‘d do all my computing in Emacs, I‘d miss out on MailMate as a mail app, on Ghostty as my terminal, on Nvim as an editor, Python as my automation language (instead of Elisp where buffer is the data type used most?) and so much more. I like the Unix way: Do one thing, and do it really good: fzf, ripgrep, yazi, lazygit, absolutely awesome apps for the console. And all can communicate with each other via pipes! So I moved away, and never was happier.
hacker_yacker 1y ago
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jutgjj 1y ago
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efitz 1y ago
Why? I’m trying to imagine the Venn diagram of “developers adopting agentic coding” and “developers who use emacs as their IDE”. Of course I’m going to get swarmed with anecdotes, but my intuition is that there’s just not a lot of overlap.
- scripper1 1y ago
  Haha. Yeah I feel they’re exact opposites. Emacs is so DIY/wanting to control your experience and create the perfect tool for you.
  - aylons 1y ago
    I've been using gemini for writing my init.el So many ideas so little time, I'm glad I have the chance
  - sakesun 1y ago
    Yes. Emacs with AI coding will be a dream come true to me.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
elif 1y ago
Yes, the singularity will happen in emacs.
7e 1y ago
It's interesting that AI fulfilled for the common user—through vibe coding—the mission which GNU/FSF could not: the freedom to create any software you want at any time. And it's ironic that of all of the software used to create AIs (like PyTorch and NVIDIA's CUDA stack), none of it was licensed GPL, though plenty of it is OSS. GNU is no longer relevant and, compared to MIT and BSD licenses, really never was. RIP FSF.
b0a04gl 1y ago
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anonzzzies 1y ago
Emacs mcp with Claude code driving it? Or is this different as that is what it should be: CC just sending elisp to the mcp and nothing else. Imho that is. Emacs is perfect for it.
cryptos 1y ago
If Windows has Copilot built in, then it is obvious that the Emacs operating system needs something similar! ;-)
mshanu 1y ago
i suppose if llm is doing most of the coding going forward, IDEs become less relevant i suppose
zastai0day 1y ago
What's its monetization?
- sexyman48 1y ago
  [flagged]
horns4lyfe 1y ago
I don’t really see the point, but it’s certainly interesting
dangoodmanUT 1y ago
A hn post getting more upvotes than it got stars on github speaks volumes about upvote intent

782 points by kgwgk 1y ago

Pretty cool! I love that these battle proven editors (emacs and (n)vim) seem to follow along with new technology, even though one might think overwise given their age. I hope this comes to vim as well!

helsinki 1y ago
It’s more common that they lead technological advancements in IDEs, not follow. Neovim in particular.
benreesman 1y ago
Neovim and to an extent emacs are where corporate IDE vendors go for ideas. From ergonomics of the UX, performance, portability, design sense (!!) and theming? It's like Sun and GNU in the 90s. Those UI/UX folks getting pissed their perfect HSL wheel and black balance got dicked with by some PM which is why the GitHub theme is great not legendary? They go home and rice Arch or NixOS and just shit on the dayjob stuff. These people are artists, and hacks follow. edit: My black balance is calculated on a per-display basis with an HSL-space transform from a hero color by the same NixOS module tree that builds the background from it's own source code as SVG and renders it before downsampling it for the specific display it's on. Of like two people helping beta it, both said roughly "using another desktop is like using the screen at the ATM". DHH is doing something similar with Arch, he's not quite as far along but this is the future. https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936c070fa56.png https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936c070fa56.png https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936d79c607c.png https://cdn.some.pics/b7r6/68936d79c607c.png
- bevr1337 1y ago
  You must understand that a screenshot of your black balance cannot translate to another screen?
  - benreesman 1y ago
    I do understand that. I was just illustrating that it's possible to do very holistically integrated desktops programmatically and in a way where you can do some math once and leverage it again. I'm personally a fan of `ono-sendai-blue`, but I have a friend in a defense adjacent space and I gather `ono-sendai-tactical` is enjoyed there. The blacks in these reference palettes are a reasonable starting point for many displays, you'll want to hint for your specific one to get optimal outcomes. https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a079 https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a07... https://gist.github.com/b7r6/fbbfb1cf2a3d14927bbe621a9050522f https://gist.github.com/b7r6/fbbfb1cf2a3d14927bbe621a9050522...
    - bevr1337 1y ago
      Thank you for clarifying. I opened that screenshot prepared to be amazed by blackness... My mistake ;)
      - benreesman 1y ago
        Haha, no worries friend. I find it's just totally counter-intuitive how much difference a little configuration makes relative to the cost of the monitor. Even a relatively inexpensive monitor (I've got like a 200 dollar gaming one that's like an Acer Predator clone and it just looked awful but tuned up it looks great, not as good as my real LG panel but still really good). I never really thought of monitors as something that need a bunch of tuning, but it really makes your dollar go further to get the black balance and subpixel hinting and stuff dialed in. For someone like me who can't afford to just go buy an Apple XDR on a whim, it's worth it.
- chaoskanzlerin 1y ago
  >stellarwind That sure is a choice of name for your project!
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Ha, it's a working title. The name I want for what this will become is `straylight v4`, but that name belongs to a friend, and it has to be a worthy successor to earn being called that. :)
- komali2 1y ago
  I don't really understand what you're talking about but it sounds cool. Naive question: what's wrong with just #000000 as black? I often change blacks to that in "dark mode" themes that are actually just dark grey. I want BLACK!
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Yeah, I also like being able to get real blacks, and certain kinds of panels can do it (I'm not an expert on panels by any means but I think this is one of the bigger selling points of the OLED family of panel designs is that they can turn off a pixel completely, which let's them get an infinite contrast ratio and therefore pure blacks). But on a lot of displays (including a couple of the ones I use all the time) the panel can't really do it well, and so there are all kinds of hinting and cheats and other workarounds, and so to get perceptual black, you actually wind up cranking the lum up a little, and that's what I've tried to do with the baseline Ono-Sendai Hypermodern blacks, is give a range of options starting from absolute black, and going up incrementally to GitHub "black"/darkest which is a very expertly designed grayscale (their designers on this are world class), but it's light, it's really high to cope with just about any panel. If you want to try it out, you can pop these codes into whatever way you set colors: https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a079 https://gist.github.com/b7r6/581295d8bb905ef598a05fdf2810a07... The "Ono-Sendai Memphis" grayscale starts at #000000.
- L0Wigh 1y ago
  What's that font ?
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Berkeley Mono, which I highly recommend if you're into that sort of thing. It's finnicky, has to be hinted right. But the ligatures and stuff are pretty unrivaled IMHO. I think it's like 100 bucks or something, but I bought it once 10 years ago and the license is still good, so it's got an amortization schedule that makes it a perfectly sensible part of a toolbox for a professional if you like myself find it more legible and pleasant than most alternatives.
anonymid 1y ago
magenta nvim implements a really nice integration of coding agents.

brotherjerky 1y ago

Anyone have good results with something similar for Neovim?

greymalik 1y ago
https://github.com/greggh/claude-code.nvim https://github.com/greggh/claude-code.nvim https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim
- bikeshaving 1y ago
  I tried these, and they seem to mainly be opening Claude Code in a pane in Vim, along with commands to open the pane. It’s missing the features added to the Emacs version like open file awareness, access to text selection, and integrated diff for changes. It would be really interesting to see a version which exposes Vim as an MCP. I would love to see Claude Code work on the active file, reading from open buffers, typing Vim motions, and taking advantage of Vim features like find/replace and macros. It would be closer to the real pair programming experience, whereas the read and write experience is slow and disjointed from editing.
  - ThomasK33 1y ago
    Hello, I'm the maintainer of the coder/claudecode.nvim plugin. This plugin does indeed support that functionality. It implements an MCP server using pure Lua and Neovim primitives. It not only notifies Claude Code about the currently open file and selected lines in a file, but also opens diff views whenever Claude Code attempts to make a file change.
softwaredoug 1y ago
I just like having a neovim terminal open with claude code open
- helsinki 1y ago
  I think that’s a decent approach, but doesn’t the performance of a Neovim terminal bother you? It simply does not feel as good as a native terminal pane. It’s not as bad as VSCode’s terminal pane, but it still leaves something to be desired.

rurban 1y ago

Looks better than my current Claude Sonnet integration via copilot.

pjm331 1y ago

love the ability to add tools to the mcp server - would expect nothing less from emacs :) as a long time emacs user i've only recently started really writing my own elisp tools, but claude is pretty good at writing elisp so i've been doing more there (sometimes it loses track of parentheses and you need to fix that, but overall pretty good) I'll def be trying this out alongside steve yegge's efrit which kicks the emacs up to 11 by letting the agent just write and evaluate arbitrary elisp expressions https://github.com/steveyegge/efrit https://github.com/steveyegge/efrit

benreesman 1y ago
I'm a long time Yegge fan and follower and while I think he's still in the vibe code honeymoon phase and hasn't had the vibe code hangover yet, his bona fides on emacs are up there with anyones. It was my observation around 12-18 momths ago that LLMs are weirdly good at elisp (which kicked off all the // hypermodern stuff I'm doing. I think he's onto something with efrit, I havent gotten it dialed yet but its reaaallyy promising.

vemv 1y ago

I'm happily using https://github.com/stevemolitor/claude-code.el https://github.com/stevemolitor/claude-code.el which is a mere terminal wrapper (including a nifty Transient menu). But just by virtue of running inside Emacs you get a lot of power - it didn't take me a lot of effort to create an efficient, customized workflow that felt much more streamlined than my older iTerm usage. I'll keep an eye on this new offering though. There's also https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca-emacs https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca-emacs which comes from the author of clojure-lsp, a very popular package within the Clojure community. I'd also been wanting to try it. For both of the more advanced offerings, I tend to be a little cautious when adopting tools I'm trusting my productivity to. Most ambitious projects need to iron out misc stuff during their 'big bang' phase.

mijoharas 1y ago
I tried that for a bit, and bounced back to just using claude code in a terminal. It was a little bit janky in emacs, and didn't have any features that justified not just running a separate terminal window (for me, at the time I checked it out). I'm wondering if this project will work. It does feel a shame that it doesn't work with the existing mcp.el package[0], but I never got around to setting that up anyways. I wonder if it's a limitation of the package? or not wanting another dependency? (in addition I've only really played around with claude code a little because I haven't gotten it to a place where I can make it write code I'd consider acceptable for my day job.) [0] https://github.com/lizqwerscott/mcp.el https://github.com/lizqwerscott/mcp.el
- yogsototh 1y ago
  I personally have great success with gptel + mcp + claude (via copilot due to corporate restrictions) I wrote a short article about how I configured it there: https://her.esy.fun/posts/0029-ai-assistants-in-doom-emacs-31-on-macos-with-clojure-mcp-server/index.html https://her.esy.fun/posts/0029-ai-assistants-in-doom-emacs-3... One thing I really appreciate with gptel is that it is very easy to switch from Claude to something else like a local llm (via ollama or gpt4all for example). And the interface will be similar.

blahgeek 1y ago

Like LSP and tree-sitter, I think AI coding tools like Claude Code or Aider are very good news for niche editors like Emacs or Vim. Instead of struggling about implementing advanced IDE-like features, they can integrate with these tools relatively easily, and focus on other editing related features that set them apart. In fact, IMO it makes these editors more competitive because they are highly customizable and easier to integrate with these tools.

mikece 1y ago
Is there a standard for integrating agentic coding tools into an editor similar to how an LSP allows the integration of language-specific features?
- benreesman 1y ago
  Its not at anything like the adoption of MCP or especially LSP, and it takes a more "foundational and composable library of primitives" approach than "wire protocol per se" approach, but `gptel` has quite the vibrant little ecosystem around it and its just god mode, wall hacks on the VSCode stuff, just blows it away. I'm under extreme time pressure at the moment, I cannot afford to fuck around on ideology right now I have to go for the jugular every day, and that means "fuck the cost" Opus 4 use in `gptel` (though Qwen and K2 are pushing it out of more and more stuff as I learn the quirks, Opus 4 TTFT under load is unusable and when it starts fighting you on clean merge boundaries because its personality vector has been set to "token stingy" its strictly worse). Its not that I dislike Cursor, its that I dont have time to put up with its compromises for non-extreme-power-user accessibility. I need an extreme power, cost indifferent, tuned for the margins stack. That's nothing with a VSCode base that I know about, and I've tried Cline and Roo and Continue and written a bunch MCP servers and I measure it all, not even close. I bet the neovim people have something just as good.
  - ljm 1y ago
    My 'beef' with Cursor is that the editor is part of the package and you don't really have the same kind of hooks into the agent that you do with Claude Code or similar, which really means you're at the mercy of the Cursor team to prioritise those things on their roadmap. That includes things like the limit of 40 MCP tools that you can only enable globally (and MCP proxies that try to do this dynamically are a bit flakey) - even just using the GitHub MCP blows through that limit because it's all or nothing. It's good for what it is but I don't love that I have to change to a whole-ass new editor to get access to the agentic additions, when alternatives that require an API key or a more flexible CLI tool can do a better job.

neutronicus 1y ago

I've tried out a similar project (claude-code.el). I use Spacemacs in evil-mode and I found it very frustrating to try and type into the Claude Code text box (often my cursor would be somewhere weird, the terminal emulator just really did not seem to "understand" that I was not in Insert Mode). I wound up deciding that I'd rather just use Claude Code in the terminal. The Claude Code text box is ALSO annoying there, so I often just write out instructions in some file (in emacs) and tell then tell CC to read it. Does this project have any facilities for authoring prompts in a temporary buffer or something?

cmrdporcupine 1y ago
I tried it and it has similar problems. Claude Code is not a good "citizen" embedded elsewhere as it wants to control the terminal completely. I use default emacs keybindings, which are a bit friendlier with this since they're similar to the bash/readline keybindings it uses... but it's still jarring.
celeritascelery 1y ago
I have also been using Claude-code.el and agree that the terminal emulators can struggle to integrate well with my regular workflow. What I have been doing is typing my prompt in the scratch buffer or minibuffer and then sending it to Claude with Claude-code-send-command (bound to s in the transient menu). I don’t even need to switch to the Claude code buffer to send it.
mijoharas 1y ago
I think I basically had the same experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813189
komali2 1y ago
I also had the spacemacs golden handcuffs on before I switched to nvim. I worry that while using spacemacs was great for getting me up to speed in a productive emacs environment, it hamstrung my long term understanding and usage of emacs. I'd often have issues like you describe with no idea how to solve it. My white whale was getting all my web dev major modes to respect a .editorconfig.

mikece 1y ago

I apologize for my ignorance in asking this question but is Emacs considered an IDE? I thought that was a term reserved for large, graphical editors like IntelliJ, Eclipse, or Visual Studio.

mosburger 1y ago
Queue the old adage ... "Emacs is a great operating system, what it needs is a good editor." I'm not sure there is a rigid enough definition of IDE to say whether Emacs qualifies or not. I think it does by virtue of its extensibility, but I could definitely see a legit argument that it's merely an editor because it doesn't have a lot of the tooling of something more modern. I think what you consider to be an IDE (IntelliJ, VS, etc) is something that didn't exist until modern GUIs. Prior to that, terminal based things like Emacs (or LSE on VMS) were the closest analog.
- gjvc 1y ago
  "Cue"
  - iLemming 1y ago
    A pro tip - add a clause in your LLM prompt to randomly misspell words, so people can't blame you for an aislopper. :)
- mikece 1y ago
  I realize my definition is purely subjective in that I deal with Visual Studio and VS Code almost exclusively and that the VS Code team is instant that they make an editor and not IDE. For me an IDE has graphical tools for building UIs and other workflow items as well as language-specific compilers and tools built in. Like I said, subjective based on my experience (and my experience doesn't include Emacs).
  - skydhash 1y ago
    Emacs is a text environment (which can also display images). It can also launch process and have IPC built in. So everything that works with text can be brought into emacs. And often, the only advantages of GUI is animation and aesthetics (to appeal to beginner). Text interfaces can be more productive.

jact 1y ago

This is profaning the temple of St iGNUcius

apwell23 1y ago

claude team unfortunately didn't make it easy for anyone to build their own. Take a look at this if you are hoping to build your own ide integration https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/PROTOCOL.... https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/ARCHITECTURE.md https://github.com/coder/claudecode.nvim/blob/main/ARCHITECT...

cml123 1y ago

Lately I've been seeing a lot of derision from the Emacs community of the consideration for integrating these kinds of tools with Emacs, but I truly think that's much more hurtful than helpful. Although the current development and usage of AI in software development may not closely resemble the techniques used at the time, it seems to me that Emacs' history is inextricably linked to the MIT AI Lab. It feels weird then that people today would shun the inclusion of AI integration into a tool that was produced from such a working group.

paddy_m 1y ago
This is due to Richard Stalllman. He thinks that integrating "non-free" alternatives when free alternatives don't yet exist slows down free software development. Not just free as in freedom alternatives, not just free as in GPL licensed, but free as in FSF controlled projects. He did the same thing with linking extensions to GCC, LLVM debugger integration into emacs (fuzzy on that one), possibly treesitter into emacs, bzr vs git for emacs code source control, and a CI build farm for emacs. In each one of those cases, he eventually relented and the core project, eventually integrated the non-free alternative years later. In the meantime this delaying didn't stop the non-free alternatives, but it did slow down adoption of the core project. This is attrocious project management that is driving people to non-free software. In the most egregious cases (bzr and CI build farm), it was done only because of his ego and wanting the FSF to matter.
- qiine 1y ago
  this is just sad
- benreesman 1y ago
  A lot of us are grateful in some abstract way for all the foundational work RMS did both technically and organizationally to preserve what remaining software freedoms we still have, but got off the bus a long time ago. He got really weird and it was on some "no fly zone" shit. There's an `emacs` community that recognizes the history without being involved in any contemporary sense.

hit8run 1y ago

I want something like this for helix!

yoyohello13 1y ago

I’ve always thought emacs is the ultimate editor for AI agents. The agent has so much access to the state of the editor itself and can even easily change editor behavior with elisp. I feel like editors which expose the level of customization like vim and emacs could potentially have a huge advantage.

iLemming 1y ago
> vim and emacs could potentially have a huge advantage. They always have had. It just depends on what people perceive to be advantageous. For me, VSCode's and IntelliJ's closed model for extensibility is a huge downside. By "closed" I mean - restrictive plugin APIs, sandboxed execution environment, corporate gatekeeping, opaque core, etc. I don't even try to "shop for more features" anymore, learning Emacs allows me to remain "goal-oriented", and more often than not, it enables me to get the shit done in a far more satisfactory manner. Meanwhile, almost every time I switch to IDEs, I hit some limitations. It's not even "skill-issue" or unfamiliarity, I do remember my days of using IntelliJ, of which I was a devoted user for almost a decade. The way how I solve problems with Emacs, is just not even close.
- smaudet 1y ago
  I went (10 years ago) JetBrains because of emacs. Back then, they were the Kool Kid in town that made emacs-style functionality more accessible. More and more they've become just another IDE with too-much-to-do. Still one of (the?) best, but as soon as your editor becomes impractical to use to edit a text file... (because it really just likes to work on projects...). But yeah, emacs remains functional in a way that JetBrains...probably won't. I'm already more than several years behind on their releases because they stopped putting a decent product...
  - iLemming 1y ago
    Oh boy, I was such a jetbrains kiddo, I can't even tell you. I had posters on my wall with keybinding and commands cheat sheets, I knew people working for JetBrains by their names, I talked to them regularly, it almost felt like we were on the same team. I tried to debug and understand plugins, even wanted to develop one, but somehow never got to do that - the hacking mindset of a habitual programmer just wasn't there yet - I kinda went with the status quo - "if IntelliJ doesn't have this feature, maybe I don't even need to know about it..." I've discovered and reported so many bugs on YouTrack, I still receive updates on them, even today - some of them date to 2009, things that JetBrains never even tried to improve since then. WebStorm was probably the biggest reason why it took me so long to switch to Emacs. My biggest fear was that if I invested in learning Emacs, and at some point I'd inevitably find that something simply couldn't be done in it, and I'd be forced to go back and my idyllic life would be ruined. God, how wrong I was. Not only have I found _everything_ I needed, I actually discovered radically different ways of solving problems. In the end, turns out one thing jetbrains did right - they have nailed the marketing - I surrendered without resistance. My biggest regret is not trying out Emacs sooner. I wish someone very persuasive showed me things I did not know were possible. That's why I get very vocal about it - kids have zero idea what they'd be missing.

InstaTunnel 1y ago

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eulers_secret 1y ago

I wonder if this can work with OpenCode (Claude Code fork which allows for other model providers: https://github.com/sst/opencode https://github.com/sst/opencode)? I really don't like being tied to a particular provider or model, switching models has been really helpful to get past blocks and save money (especially with Deepseek!). And, of course, I need to use Github Copilot's Open AI-compatile API at work...

bbsss 1y ago
Note that there are several projects on GitHub that let you proxy an openai compatible server and set it as ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL Got some good success with GLM-4.5-Air running locally recently. Still mainly using claude code max though.
pxc 1y ago
OpenCode isn't a fork of Claude Code. It's descended from an independent open-source project that was called "TermAI": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483338

r_murphey 1y ago

This is the way.

wyuenho 1y ago

While I'm happy that simultaneously there are at least 5 known Emacs/Claude Code integration packages, with seemingly 2 or 3 battling it out on Reddit and elsewhere, I feel like the best implemented one is the quiet one that no one has ever talked about. https://github.com/yuya373/claude-code-emacs https://github.com/yuya373/claude-code-emacs <- it literally implements every feature that every other ones have.

celeritascelery 1y ago
It doesn’t look like that had the /ide integration that Claude-code-ide has
- wyuenho 1y ago
  It absolutely does. Give it a try.
  - celeritascelery 1y ago
    I just tried it. It does not support /ide integration. You can test this by typing /ide in claude code. MCP support is not the same thing as IDE support.
    - wyuenho 1y ago
      Oh you mean something like active file awareness and selection context? This code seems quite well architected and has websockets well integrated, both features sound like a lunch break’s worth of work if you file a ticket. Other than that, I couldn’t care less about how these capabilities are implemented or whether /ide works.
kgwgk 1y ago
I don't know how popular it is but it may be the easiest one to install: https://melpa.org/#/claude-code https://melpa.org/#/claude-code
coldbrew583 1y ago

qalmakka 1y ago

my biggest issue with agents in neovim or emacs is that I also use emacs and neovim to open or edit sensitive data (like ssh keys, etc) that I don't want to upload to a random LLM. A quick solution I devised is to use bubblewrap to get a fully separate instance of nvim. Something along the lines of alias lvim "bwrap --bind / / --bind $HOME/.config/{lazy,n}vim --bind $HOME/.local/share/{lazy,n}vim --proc /proc --dev /dev nvim" works great (note: fish alias)

bicx 1y ago
I believe many of these agents will not operate on files included in a gitignored file, which helps with sensitive assets like .env files. Definitely worth confirming. Either way, don’t open such a file and ask the agent questions about it. It’ll likely process it either way.
- Keyframe 1y ago
  gemini CLI won't, but will if you ask it to.. so what are the guaranteed one of it's internal thinking steps doesn't do the same?

deleted 1y ago

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ericdallo 1y ago

Give it a try to https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca, I'm focusing on make the best tool for ai pair programming in Emacs

riskassessment 1y ago

Gptel has been working great for me. I'd be interested in checking this out but I only have so much time to set up and test new tools. What features would make it worthwhile to switch from gptel?

iLemming 1y ago
You don't "switch" from gptel as this package solves a problem of a different dimension. Gptel is still great for tons of other things, even though it's not suitable for "project context-wise" LLM workflows.
- azkae 1y ago
  I am using macher for small edits on a codebase with gptel: https://github.com/kmontag/macher https://github.com/kmontag/macher The package define a list of tools that gptel can use to inspect and edit a project. The tools are packaged as a preset so all you have to do is add "@macher" to your prompt to include the tools & update the system directive.

Karrot_Kream 1y ago

I'm really glad that emacs is integrating modern tooling like LSP and tree-sitter, now Claude Code, but this approach is showing its age. I'm an emacs user of 20 years and honestly it's getting hard to configure everything these days. Claude Code before the IDE integration was actually the easiest thing to get working (since it just worked and then auto-revert-mode keeps my buffers in sync.) I'm on a new MacOS install for $WORK trying to get lsp and ts work with a Typescript/Go repo and after some $PATH wonkiness (my default shell is not the same shell as the one that emacs launches in) got typescript-ls working but gopls is still having issues being downloaded. I haven't spent the hour or two it would probably take to figure out why the in-built downloader can't put gopls in the right place. I'm curious what emacs users are doing these days. I'm using Zed right now and really enjoying it but it's really hard to give up 20 years of emacs and I do love how emacs can scale from small one-off config file editing to huge projects and I love how configurable it is. Is neovim better in this space? Should I be learning how to debug elisp better to understand how the commands interact with my environment? I've been using emacs keybindings (in Dvorak at that) for so long I don't know if I'd enjoy the neovim editing experience.

antipaul 1y ago
In macOS, I use the GUI Emacs from https://emacsformacosx.com/ https://emacsformacosx.com/ Perhaps if you solve shell issues there once, they will stick.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  I'm running Homebrew's GUI Emacs which inherits from its opening shell. If I run GUI emacs from my shell then it inherits the environment of the shell so that seems to be doing okay. I'm quite busy outside of work right now so I'll probably take a crack at this in a few weeks, but it's also dismaying how annoying it is to manage all the ts and lsp dependencies to make my projects work, let alone pointing the lsp to use the right package.json or go path or other things. I have no doubt that, in time, I can whack-a-mole the issues down. It does reduce my confidence in changing my environment because of how brittle the stack is. That's what makes me curious about the rest of the ecosystem. Zed mostly works though I have had to configure it to use project-specific linter configs using somewhat underdocumented settings files. I'm curious if neovim is easier to get working because it's a smaller beast so easier to debug, but I also just don't know if I'd enjoy a switch to few-key modal editing from the chorded emacs style I love.

megaloblasto 1y ago

This is awesome. I love emacs and I love integrating AI into my coding work flow. What I really want is to be able to run something like this locally for, say, less than $2000 in computer hardware. Is this feasible now or any time soon. Anyone out there using agents with local models for coding?

iLemming 1y ago
gptel supports all sorts of models, including localized ones.
calebkaiser 1y ago
There's a lot of great work both around supporting memory efficient inference (like on a closer-to-consumer machine), as well as on open source code-focused models. A lot of people are excited about the Qwen3-Coder family of models: https://huggingface.co/collections/Qwen/qwen3-coder-687fc861e53c939e52d52d10 https://huggingface.co/collections/Qwen/qwen3-coder-687fc861... For running locally, there are tools like Ollama and LM Studio. Your hardware needs will fluctuate depending on what size/quantization of model you try to run, but 2k in hardware cost is reasonable for running a lot of models. Some people have good experiences using the M-series Macs, which is probably a good bang-for-buck if you're exclusively interested in inference. I'd recommend checking out the LocalLlamas subreddit for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ Getting results on par with big labs isn't feasible, but if you prefer to run everything locally, it is a fun and doable project.
- megaloblasto 1y ago
  Awesome. Great info, thanks Is this just a fun project for now, or could I actually benefit from it in terms of software production like I do with tools like claude code? I am interested in carefully tailoring it to specific projects, integrating curated personal notes, external documentation, scientific papers, etc via RAG (this part I've already written), and carefully chosing the tools available to the agent. If I hand tailor the AI agents to each project, can I expect to get something perhaps similar to the performance boost of Claude code for $2000 (USD)? If not $2000, then how much would I need? I'm pretty sure for something like $75000 I could do this with a large deep seek model locally, and certainly get something very close to claude code, right?

wwarner 1y ago

This is great, and I need it and will use it, but what I need even more is some kind of integration with org mode (or just note taking generally). I found out the hard way that github/copilot deletes conversations after 30 days! So much for building a knowledge base with an AI assistant! I really need something a bit like Goog's `notebookllm` for capturing research, except I'd like to control it locally.

radarsat1 1y ago
There is ob-aider, maybe interesting for you to try. https://github.com/emacsmirror/ob-aider https://github.com/emacsmirror/ob-aider
banjomonster 1y ago
Try gptel-mode - your chats are in org buffers, and you can save/restore sessions easily. Also plays nicely with mcp.el for more tooling access.
- JohnKemeny 1y ago
  gptel-mode (I have it at C-c L) is great!

epistasis 1y ago

See also this other integration of Claude Code for emacs: https://github.com/cpoile/claudemacs https://github.com/cpoile/claudemacs

crat3r 1y ago

I feel like I still have yet to see any decent answers to this question; Are professional SDE paying for Claude on their own dime, and then logging into their personal account and somehow integrating Claude Code (or other LLMs) into their work repos that way? The startup I work for has chosen their flavor of AI subscription and its frankly not developer focused. Instead they chose Google because of the productivity tools in the Google App suite. I want to try Claude Code but the reality is that I don't want to be the martyr that tells my team lead that I want to see if AI can do (parts of) my job for me. It feels pretty sketchy or maybe even completely wrong to use something like this on a company repo I don't own without permissions, so I haven't done it. I suppose I will just have to continue to wonder if the agentic coding services are smoke and mirrors because I somehow don't know anyone who has used them extensively either and I have no clue when I will be able to use one with the strings attached of it being on a free-tier...

ceuk 1y ago
Yes I pay for the most expensive Claude sub with my own money and use it at work. I also have to use it via a proxy server I set up to get around the corporate firewall which explicitly blocks it. The company like the results but wouldn't like how I get them.. More corporate ridiculousness
komali2 1y ago
Our company set up some kind of Wise debit card thing where we each get our own number, and they told us "try out any AI tool you want." So I subscribe to a new one every month to try out while still shoveling like 150$/mo at Claude cause it's consistently been the best and the one I use the most. Cursor as well has been good for their completion model which surpasses anything else I've tried for inline/multiline/jump completions. But I've also tried supermaven, codeium/windsurf, copilot, zed. I guess from the company's perspective, a couple hundred bucks a month is well worth the time of keeping us all up to date with ai tooling.

xvfLJfx9 1y ago

I hope one day we can have the same thing for the helix editor.

asawfofor 1y ago

Might SWE agents converge on an inclusive set of APIs that Editors and IDEa could adapt to?

eschaton 1y ago

Unfortunate to see more of this horseshit.

submeta 1y ago

I love(d) Emacs a lot a few years ago. Until my job and obligations didn’t leave me much room for tinkering. There is an inverse relationship between tinkering and getting things done. Although LLMs changed the game: These days I leave the tinkering to Claude Code. And can change every aspect of my tools within seconds. No waste of time, max output. But I still moved away. why? Because I believe the Emacs way is wrong. And here’s why: If I‘d do all my computing in Emacs, I‘d miss out on MailMate as a mail app, on Ghostty as my terminal, on Nvim as an editor, Python as my automation language (instead of Elisp where buffer is the data type used most?) and so much more. I like the Unix way: Do one thing, and do it really good: fzf, ripgrep, yazi, lazygit, absolutely awesome apps for the console. And all can communicate with each other via pipes! So I moved away, and never was happier.

hacker_yacker 1y ago

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jutgjj 1y ago

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efitz 1y ago

Why? I’m trying to imagine the Venn diagram of “developers adopting agentic coding” and “developers who use emacs as their IDE”. Of course I’m going to get swarmed with anecdotes, but my intuition is that there’s just not a lot of overlap.

scripper1 1y ago
Haha. Yeah I feel they’re exact opposites. Emacs is so DIY/wanting to control your experience and create the perfect tool for you.
- aylons 1y ago
  I've been using gemini for writing my init.el So many ideas so little time, I'm glad I have the chance
- sakesun 1y ago
  Yes. Emacs with AI coding will be a dream come true to me.
deleted 1y ago
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elif 1y ago

Yes, the singularity will happen in emacs.

7e 1y ago

It's interesting that AI fulfilled for the common user—through vibe coding—the mission which GNU/FSF could not: the freedom to create any software you want at any time. And it's ironic that of all of the software used to create AIs (like PyTorch and NVIDIA's CUDA stack), none of it was licensed GPL, though plenty of it is OSS. GNU is no longer relevant and, compared to MIT and BSD licenses, really never was. RIP FSF.

b0a04gl 1y ago

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anonzzzies 1y ago

Emacs mcp with Claude code driving it? Or is this different as that is what it should be: CC just sending elisp to the mcp and nothing else. Imho that is. Emacs is perfect for it.

cryptos 1y ago

If Windows has Copilot built in, then it is obvious that the Emacs operating system needs something similar! ;-)

mshanu 1y ago

i suppose if llm is doing most of the coding going forward, IDEs become less relevant i suppose

zastai0day 1y ago

What's its monetization?

sexyman48 1y ago
[flagged]

horns4lyfe 1y ago

I don’t really see the point, but it’s certainly interesting

dangoodmanUT 1y ago

A hn post getting more upvotes than it got stars on github speaks volumes about upvote intent