7 ms·

Midnight Captain – A midnight commander inspired file manager

39 points by duguyue100 6mo ago

duguyue100 6mo ago
Midnight Commander has always been my favorite terminal file manager. It's feature-rich, fast, and actually tries to be a file manager compared to modern alternatives. However, there are quite some features that I never used, and I couldn't configure a Vim bindings that works well for me. With OpenCode, I can finally make my own terminal file manager. I borrowed the main design concepts from Midnight Commander and some behavior from NVim-Tree file explorer. I hope you would like it, at least I do. Since this project is entirely vibe-coded, so I'm not going to accept PR from the community, but feel free to open issues and fork it.
- vovanidze 6mo ago
  still haven't found anything that replaces mc for me. the 2-pane layout is basically muscle memory at this point. everything modern just feels way too bloated or slow. mc is great but customizing the bindings is a total headache tbh. really like the idea of better vim integration here. curious how it handles performance on large directories with 10k+ files? giving it a spin...
  - buster 6mo ago
    I'm using fman, which is like a lightweight graphical alternative to mc.
  - gala8y 6mo ago
    I recently switched to almost exclusively using vifm with some zoxide/fzf extra commands + some custom previewers/openers.
    - vovanidze 6mo ago
      vifm is great if you live in vim, but mc is just hardcoded into my brain at this point. totally agree on zoxide + fzf though, cant imagine navigating a large fs without them now. they're the only 'modern' additions to my workflow that actually felt worth the setup time.
alonsovm 6mo ago
cool let me try it. and 'ill give you my feedback
daoistmonk 6mo ago
The AGENTS.md is hilarious! I like the caveman mode and classical mode seems.. interesting!
- comboy 6mo ago
  Interesting that in Chinese, classical writing is associated with terseness. That definitely wouldn't work that way in other languages I know.
  - rjh29 6mo ago
    Newspaper headlines?
- duguyue100 6mo ago
  Just saying, I simply copied from https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman Beyond the cost of tokens, I found it's very good at doing more with a limited context window before OpenCode hits context compaction.
konmok 6mo ago
I don't think the level of reliability necessary for a file manager is achievable with vibe coding. This is an area where small bugs can cause immediate and catastrophic data loss. If you're shopping for a file manager, I recommend avoiding any project that incorporates a significant amount of LLM-generated code. Maybe in theory it could be reviewed as thoroughly as handwritten code; in practice that never happens.
- nprateem 6mo ago
  It's not the vibe coding, it's the lack of tests
  - perbu 6mo ago
    wow. there are actually no tests here.
  - alex43578 6mo ago
    And I think human written tests at that. If the LLM is blind to the failure mode X, does it know to reliably write a test to evaluate the behavior of X?
muppetman 6mo ago
“With opencode I can” closes tab
- dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
  I was mildly excited clicking the link and then I saw that ... I guess this is the shape of things to come.
- vova_hn2 6mo ago
  Is anti-AI sentiment somehow exempt from the "shallow dismissals" rule?
  - add-sub-mul-div 6mo ago
    If something is touching my filesystem or worse, it's critical to know whether it's vibe coded and I value the callout.
    - vova_hn2 6mo ago
      I doubt that you would install this application without even reading the README, so I don't understand how citing literally the second paragraph of the README helps. > it's critical to know whether it's vibe coded Strictly speaking, the only way to be sure that something is not vibe-coded is to either have a proof that the code were published before vibe-coding tools were available or to hand code it yourself. Also, if you think that knowing if something is vibe-coded is so important, it is unwise to attack people who honestly tell you that something is vibe-coded.
manbash 6mo ago
If you're shopping for a file manager, I'd recommend "yazi", which was a new, yet practical experience for me.
- deafpolygon 6mo ago
  yazi is great, I’ve had it around for a while… integrates well with neovim and other shell tools.
- Klaster_1 6mo ago
  Tried yazi this week and it indeed feels nice, currently trying to maybe move over from Total Commander to yet to have same file manager across OSes. Some aspects are still not completely ironed out, though. For example, today I discovered that there's no reliable exit hook and plugins have to override hotkeys and resort to various hacks. I had to patch a session saving extension so it kills mpv-based music preview plugin after yazi quits with "q". Kinda rough experience, but at least manageable with plugins in Lua.
- orphea 6mo ago
  My first impression is not great. Several clicks in the docs - no screenshots to see how it looks like. The very first thing advertised on their GitHub - some "#1 coding agent". And again - no screenshots. Some flashing unpleasant video. "Written in Rust", which is becoming a meme, like if a user should care. Maybe it's a good file manager but, imo, authors completely failed to advertise it right.
- duguyue100 6mo ago
  I actually used Yazi a while back. And it's definitely >100x more robust and production-ready than what I iterated for ~3 hours :). And I have no doubt that it is probably way faster. The only problem for me is that it's not how I use a file manager. I learned to have two parallel windows when moving files, even before I learned how to use a terminal. That's why Midnight Commander was feeling so great. Until the day that I wanted to eliminate my usage of function keys and was tired of maintaining a config file. Some may say I "overkilled" it just to get rid of a config file..
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
perbu 6mo ago
I think it is interesting that these pieces of software are now being inspired by Midnight Commander and are being built by people who never worked with or experiences the original, Norton Commander.
- duguyue100 6mo ago
  I have never known this part of the history while using Midnight Commander for so many years.
nottorp 6mo ago
> : opens a command prompt for power-user actions Vibe coded or not, that's what puts me off from most nc/dn/mc reimplementations. If you can't reach the command line by just typing the command, what's the point? At least on this one you don't have to mouse click somewhere...
- ZoomZoomZoom 6mo ago
  Isn't this the point if TUI/GUI that you don't have to? Common things should be shortcutted, some accessible from menus for discoverability. Command entering is just one if the "modes", and not necessarily the default one. If shortcuts are limited to special keys and combos, this frees plane input for commands, but I personally prefer list filtering by default.
  - nottorp 6mo ago
    > Isn't this the point if TUI/GUI that you don't have to? No TUI/GUI can do everything a unix command prompt can do, can they? I don't know what your usage pattern is, but I keep mc open in a few terminals all the time, and just run commands in mc's shell when I need them. I suppose that if you only run the file manager when you need to manage files, your point of view makes sense.
    - ZoomZoomZoom 6mo ago
      Yeah, I don't generally live in MC to the same extent I do in DC when I'm on Windows. I rarely do anything besides the basics (F5/F6) when managing files in MC, and for advanced stuff, like using rsync/rclone for moving files, I mostly use the usermenu.
      - nottorp 6mo ago
        I am aware of the usermenu's existence, but it feels faster to just type. Most of my use cases are just one file though.
- duguyue100 6mo ago
duguyue100 6mo ago
Author here. Haha, thanks for all the feedback! I don't even want to pretend this is production-ready. When I vibe-coded this, the only user I had in mind was me. And I have to live with the consequence of unreliability. I recently found that writing personal software through a coding agent is a fairly interesting endeavour. It's like I'm paying to get the software I need in the form of tokens.
eps 6mo ago
> Inspired by Midnight Commander Norton Commander. Know and respect your elders.
- ZoomZoomZoom 6mo ago
  It's perfectly valid to be second- and further-level inspired and even dislike/reject some aspects of the predecessors.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
begoon 6mo ago
Consider https://github.com/begoon/xc https://github.com/begoon/xc

39 points by duguyue100 6mo ago

Midnight Commander has always been my favorite terminal file manager. It's feature-rich, fast, and actually tries to be a file manager compared to modern alternatives. However, there are quite some features that I never used, and I couldn't configure a Vim bindings that works well for me. With OpenCode, I can finally make my own terminal file manager. I borrowed the main design concepts from Midnight Commander and some behavior from NVim-Tree file explorer. I hope you would like it, at least I do. Since this project is entirely vibe-coded, so I'm not going to accept PR from the community, but feel free to open issues and fork it.

vovanidze 6mo ago
still haven't found anything that replaces mc for me. the 2-pane layout is basically muscle memory at this point. everything modern just feels way too bloated or slow. mc is great but customizing the bindings is a total headache tbh. really like the idea of better vim integration here. curious how it handles performance on large directories with 10k+ files? giving it a spin...
- buster 6mo ago
  I'm using fman, which is like a lightweight graphical alternative to mc.
- gala8y 6mo ago
  I recently switched to almost exclusively using vifm with some zoxide/fzf extra commands + some custom previewers/openers.
  - vovanidze 6mo ago
    vifm is great if you live in vim, but mc is just hardcoded into my brain at this point. totally agree on zoxide + fzf though, cant imagine navigating a large fs without them now. they're the only 'modern' additions to my workflow that actually felt worth the setup time.

alonsovm 6mo ago

cool let me try it. and 'ill give you my feedback

daoistmonk 6mo ago

The AGENTS.md is hilarious! I like the caveman mode and classical mode seems.. interesting!

comboy 6mo ago
Interesting that in Chinese, classical writing is associated with terseness. That definitely wouldn't work that way in other languages I know.
- rjh29 6mo ago
  Newspaper headlines?
duguyue100 6mo ago
Just saying, I simply copied from https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman Beyond the cost of tokens, I found it's very good at doing more with a limited context window before OpenCode hits context compaction.

konmok 6mo ago

I don't think the level of reliability necessary for a file manager is achievable with vibe coding. This is an area where small bugs can cause immediate and catastrophic data loss. If you're shopping for a file manager, I recommend avoiding any project that incorporates a significant amount of LLM-generated code. Maybe in theory it could be reviewed as thoroughly as handwritten code; in practice that never happens.

nprateem 6mo ago
It's not the vibe coding, it's the lack of tests
- perbu 6mo ago
  wow. there are actually no tests here.
- alex43578 6mo ago
  And I think human written tests at that. If the LLM is blind to the failure mode X, does it know to reliably write a test to evaluate the behavior of X?

muppetman 6mo ago

“With opencode I can” closes tab

dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
I was mildly excited clicking the link and then I saw that ... I guess this is the shape of things to come.
vova_hn2 6mo ago
Is anti-AI sentiment somehow exempt from the "shallow dismissals" rule?
- add-sub-mul-div 6mo ago
  If something is touching my filesystem or worse, it's critical to know whether it's vibe coded and I value the callout.
  - vova_hn2 6mo ago
    I doubt that you would install this application without even reading the README, so I don't understand how citing literally the second paragraph of the README helps. > it's critical to know whether it's vibe coded Strictly speaking, the only way to be sure that something is not vibe-coded is to either have a proof that the code were published before vibe-coding tools were available or to hand code it yourself. Also, if you think that knowing if something is vibe-coded is so important, it is unwise to attack people who honestly tell you that something is vibe-coded.

manbash 6mo ago

If you're shopping for a file manager, I'd recommend "yazi", which was a new, yet practical experience for me.

deafpolygon 6mo ago
yazi is great, I’ve had it around for a while… integrates well with neovim and other shell tools.
Klaster_1 6mo ago
Tried yazi this week and it indeed feels nice, currently trying to maybe move over from Total Commander to yet to have same file manager across OSes. Some aspects are still not completely ironed out, though. For example, today I discovered that there's no reliable exit hook and plugins have to override hotkeys and resort to various hacks. I had to patch a session saving extension so it kills mpv-based music preview plugin after yazi quits with "q". Kinda rough experience, but at least manageable with plugins in Lua.
orphea 6mo ago
My first impression is not great. Several clicks in the docs - no screenshots to see how it looks like. The very first thing advertised on their GitHub - some "#1 coding agent". And again - no screenshots. Some flashing unpleasant video. "Written in Rust", which is becoming a meme, like if a user should care. Maybe it's a good file manager but, imo, authors completely failed to advertise it right.
duguyue100 6mo ago
I actually used Yazi a while back. And it's definitely >100x more robust and production-ready than what I iterated for ~3 hours :). And I have no doubt that it is probably way faster. The only problem for me is that it's not how I use a file manager. I learned to have two parallel windows when moving files, even before I learned how to use a terminal. That's why Midnight Commander was feeling so great. Until the day that I wanted to eliminate my usage of function keys and was tired of maintaining a config file. Some may say I "overkilled" it just to get rid of a config file..

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

perbu 6mo ago

I think it is interesting that these pieces of software are now being inspired by Midnight Commander and are being built by people who never worked with or experiences the original, Norton Commander.

duguyue100 6mo ago
I have never known this part of the history while using Midnight Commander for so many years.

nottorp 6mo ago

> : opens a command prompt for power-user actions Vibe coded or not, that's what puts me off from most nc/dn/mc reimplementations. If you can't reach the command line by just typing the command, what's the point? At least on this one you don't have to mouse click somewhere...

ZoomZoomZoom 6mo ago
Isn't this the point if TUI/GUI that you don't have to? Common things should be shortcutted, some accessible from menus for discoverability. Command entering is just one if the "modes", and not necessarily the default one. If shortcuts are limited to special keys and combos, this frees plane input for commands, but I personally prefer list filtering by default.
- nottorp 6mo ago
  > Isn't this the point if TUI/GUI that you don't have to? No TUI/GUI can do everything a unix command prompt can do, can they? I don't know what your usage pattern is, but I keep mc open in a few terminals all the time, and just run commands in mc's shell when I need them. I suppose that if you only run the file manager when you need to manage files, your point of view makes sense.
  - ZoomZoomZoom 6mo ago
    Yeah, I don't generally live in MC to the same extent I do in DC when I'm on Windows. I rarely do anything besides the basics (F5/F6) when managing files in MC, and for advanced stuff, like using rsync/rclone for moving files, I mostly use the usermenu.
    - nottorp 6mo ago
      I am aware of the usermenu's existence, but it feels faster to just type. Most of my use cases are just one file though.
duguyue100 6mo ago

duguyue100 6mo ago

Author here. Haha, thanks for all the feedback! I don't even want to pretend this is production-ready. When I vibe-coded this, the only user I had in mind was me. And I have to live with the consequence of unreliability. I recently found that writing personal software through a coding agent is a fairly interesting endeavour. It's like I'm paying to get the software I need in the form of tokens.

eps 6mo ago

> Inspired by Midnight Commander Norton Commander. Know and respect your elders.

ZoomZoomZoom 6mo ago
It's perfectly valid to be second- and further-level inspired and even dislike/reject some aspects of the predecessors.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

begoon 6mo ago

Consider https://github.com/begoon/xc https://github.com/begoon/xc