Rune editor
Ranked 18 of 56 text editors by recommenders
A free, hackable code editor written in Go, praised for its clean look and vim-style workflow. Critics say it is immature and that its claims and visual design fall short.
A free, hackable code editor written in Go, praised for its clean look and vim-style workflow. Critics say it is immature and that its claims and visual design fall short.
39 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 22
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, 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
Looks nice and cool
“Rune looks very nice so I'll certainly give it a whirl.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” “Rune looks pretty cool too.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” “Project looks cool as hell”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Rune 1.1: adds Python, an Emacs editor, a symbol index and is now free” Hackable Go-based editor
“Exciting to have a hackable Go based editor.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” “I'm happy to see a Go based editor. However this days I'm writing code mainly in typescript”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Visual design looks weak
“The themes are pretty bad right now IMHO.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” “The homepage is definitely giving "designed by an LLM"”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Rune 1.3: adds TypeScript, a Helix editor, Kitty graphics and OSC-7501” Claims overstated or unsupported
“the blog post makes implied claims of equivalence with moderate investment”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” “the claims implied don't stand up to scrutiny”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” Unclear purpose, niche audience
“Anyone interested in this already uses emacs or vim+tmux.”
Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “Rune is now open source” “I just don't understand the premise behind Rune”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Rune 1.1: adds Python, an Emacs editor, a symbol index and is now free”
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 | — |
| Rune editorThis page | 22 | 17 | 56% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“they should have a real image viewer render images and control the coordinates of the image viewer's window”
“The original plan was to support both WebKit and SDL frontends”
“I am not happy with your decisions for the ide you sold me.”
“The homepage is definitely giving "designed by an LLM"”
“rather than 1 tool that does everything poorly”
“Anyone interested in this already uses emacs or vim+tmux.”
“So it has the visual limitations of a TUI without the portability benefits?”
“I'm disappointed the game didn't lean into that more.”
“I can barely read parts of the website.”
“Pretty dissapointed when I saw the website”
“Exciting to have a hackable Go based editor.”
“The themes are pretty bad right now IMHO.”
“the null build path is entirely unoptimized for objects with long build times”
“I have played that a lot when growing up”
“I wanted Rune to be more than a regular editor with vim mode.”
“the blog post makes implied claims of equivalence with moderate investment”
“the claims implied don't stand up to scrutiny”
“The idea of the reverse rug-pull is fantastic, I hope it will work out!”
“The friction was much too much.”
“I'm happy to see a Go based editor. However this days I'm writing code mainly in typescript”
“Rune acts as a bridge between automated and manual programming.”
“this sounds like a terrible idea.”
“Rune looks pretty cool too.”
“Rune looks very nice so I'll certainly give it a whirl.”
“I like the idea of making it trivial to work across multiple machines”
“Also great to see it under the GPLv3, and not some crap like MIT.”
“the kind of codebase structure an agent can query instead of rediscovering it from scratch”
“Rune is a terrifically designed language for this.”
“All of that makes it quite easy to work with text.”
“Project looks cool as hell”
“I just don't understand the premise behind Rune”
“No quit available in application menu, I tried `!forcequit` from the command menu and nothing happened either.”
“its definetely not mature enough for me”
“Suspicious of black box shell installations like that”
“the live region announcements are really annoying on the web page”
“As soon as it said "non-commercial" I noped.”
“pricing page does not at all make clear what isn't included in the free version”
“reduces 10-second workspace-wide queries to under 100 ms”
“Give the same spec to any AI tool — the generated code has the same behavior.”
“With RUNE those choices are locked down in a spec, and the AI follows them.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.