Ki Editor
Shares rank 26 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Recommended for editing by syntax tree, with word-based motions and a VS Code extension to ease entry. Critics point to muscle-memory conflicts with Vim keys.
Recommended for editing by syntax tree, with word-based motions and a VS Code extension to ease entry. Critics point to muscle-memory conflicts with Vim keys.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Logical word and syntax-tree movements
“Word, End, Back, Change Word and even Change Inner (, etc are very logical to me and I feel like I'm talking to the editor when editing.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “Ki's approach of making the AST a first-class citizen is brilliant.”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “In Ki you don't have to know the name of the syntax node”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” - Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “My thoughts after using Clojure for about a month”
Scripting, custom commands, refactoring support
“top feature. Combined with things like "extract method" makes mundane refactorings super fast.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “Scripting language? Check! Custom commands? Check! Windows management? Check!”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” Nix-first, keyboard layout agnostic
“I highly appreciate the Nix-first approach”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “Love that it's keyboard layout agnostic.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” VS Code extension eases entry
“having a vs code extension as an entry point really helps me”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “I wrote the vscode extension for Ki.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Muscle memory clashes with Vim keys
“git operations became two-key sequences, starting with Ctrl-G and that damn Ctrl-K stopped being the shortcut for commit.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “Muscle memory is a problem :( Vim's j moves down. Ki's j in line mode moves up...”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” Heavy cognitive load, positional keybindings
“each one has a huge cognitive load for minimal benefit”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST” “I don't like the positional keybindings.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| Ki EditorThis page | 14 | 7 | 67% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
25 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“core movements based on AST”
“Ki's approach of making the AST a first-class citizen is brilliant.”
“git operations became two-key sequences, starting with Ctrl-G and that damn Ctrl-K stopped being the shortcut for commit.”
“In Ki you don't have to know the name of the syntax node”
“A great addition to the helix workflow”
“I wrote the vscode extension for Ki.”
“each one has a huge cognitive load for minimal benefit”
“I highly appreciate the Nix-first approach”
“Scripting language? Check! Custom commands? Check! Windows management? Check!”
“ohh Ki and Helix on the front page today... it's a good day! :)”
“having a vs code extension as an entry point really helps me”
“Muscle memory is a problem :( Vim's j moves down. Ki's j in line mode moves up...”
“I still don't see how they would be useful compared to my current workflow”
“tried it with my keyboard set to Dvorak, which was plainly broken”
“I don't like the positional keybindings.”
“Helix or even Ki would not be needed if Neovim allowed to completely replace the vim part of it with plugins”
“This is awesome! And I bet it arguably requires less logic to do so as well.”
“Love that it's keyboard layout agnostic.”
“top feature. Combined with things like "extract method" makes mundane refactorings super fast.”
“it's a really cool project”
“Word, End, Back, Change Word and even Change Inner (, etc are very logical to me and I feel like I'm talking to the editor when editing.”
“the docs are really subpar in a lot of ways”
“Seeing cliche LLMisms doesn't signal the same level of care to me.”
“which is specifically made to solve this issue”
“the editing model is definitely an improvement from ux perspective”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.