From Vim or Neovim
Motions, operators, text objects, counts, ., registers, macros, marks, visual modes, :s, :g, folds and splits. Each is tested against what real Vim does.
ciw dap qa :%s C-w v
Free and open source ยท Linux and macOS
The editor you can rewrite while it runs.
Vim's editing. Emacs's depth. One fast binary. In imp, every key, command and mode is a few lines of Scheme you can open, change and reload without restarting.
- 1Write a command in
init.scm - 2SPC e b evaluates it, live
- 3SPC i d runs it anywhere
No restart, no plugin manifest, no build step. It's in M-x too, with its key beside it, and SPC h f shows its docstring.
Keep your muscle memory.
Switching editors usually costs you a month of fumbling. imp starts out speaking the dialects you already know.
From Doom or Spacemacs
Press SPC and a menu shows what comes next: files, buffers, windows, projects, search, git, code, Org, help. M-x runs any command by name, with its keys and docs beside it.
SPC f f SPC p p SPC g g M-x
From Emacs
C-z switches to an Emacs state, with C-x C-f, C-x C-s and friends. Describe any key, function, option or face, then redefine it from the same window.
C-x C-f SPC h k SPC h f C-c C-c
Everything you'd install twenty plugins for. Already here.
These are real screenshots of imp, not mockups. Git, Org, a file browser and a command palette all come in the box.
Git, Magit-style
SPC g g opens status down the right: stage, unstage, commit and browse history from the keyboard, beside the code you're working on. q puts it away.
Org mode and its agenda
Outlines, TODO states, schedules and deadlines with a date picker, capture templates, refiling, clocking, and tables that align themselves. The agenda has Org's views, from a day to a year, with a time grid, habits, tag matches, search, filters and bulk actions, in Doom's keys.
Every command, by name
M-x fuzzy-matches every command and lists its key binding and the first line of its docs. The ones you write in init.scm show up the same way.
A leader key that teaches itself
Press SPC and pause: imp lists what each next key does. You'll stop needing the menu in about a week, and define-leader! adds your own entries.
A file browser you edit like text
:Ex lists a directory with permissions, sizes and times. Rename by editing names, delete by deleting lines, and ( hides the details.
Splits, highlighting, language servers
Tree-sitter highlighting and text objects for sixteen languages, and for code embedded in others, like Markdown fences and HTML's scripts. More grammars install from git with M-x install-grammars. Language servers give diagnostics, go-to-definition, references, rename, code actions, formatting and completion. Debugging works over DAP. Drag the divider to resize.
It's Scheme all the way down.
imp's Rust core handles buffers, rendering and parsing. Everything else, from Vim's motions to the git interface, is Scheme in runtime/. You can read it, and redefine any piece from your config.
- Change it live. Edit
init.scmand SPC e b. No restart. - Find anything. SPC h k tells you what a key runs. SPC h f shows a function's docs.
- Mistakes don't lock you out. An error in your config shows on the status line, and the editor still starts.
- Packages, without a package manager.
use-package!loads one from disk or from git.
~/.config/imp/init.scm
;; Options, a theme and a key.
(set-option! 'relativenumber #t)
(load-theme! 'gruvbox-dark)
(define-key! 'normal "C-s" 'save-buffer)
;; Packages that come with imp.
(use-package! 'olivetti) ; a centred column
(use-package! 'org-babel) ; run source blocks
;; Your own command, on SPC and in M-x.
(define-command! 'insert-date
(lambda (count)
"Insert today's date at the cursor."
(begin-change!)
(buffer-insert! (cursor)
(without-final-newline
(cadr (run-shell "date +%F" ""))))))
(define-leader! "id" 'insert-date "insert date")Built for how you actually work.
A window, or your terminal
imp opens in a GPU-drawn window, with zoom, padding and see-through backgrounds. Over SSH, on a console, or with --tui, the same binary runs in your terminal.
A daemon that keeps your place
imp --daemon keeps your editor running. Attach to it from any terminal with --connect, even from another machine over SSH.
Claude Code built in
M-a opens Claude Code for the current project in a side window. Hiding it keeps it running. Send it the selection, the buffer or a file reference, already labelled with lines.
Completion that merges sources
Language server suggestions, file paths, imp's own names with their docs, and words from your open buffers, ranked together. Snippets expand with tab stops, and VS Code snippet files load as they are.
Help you can trust
Every command and function carries Emacs-style documentation. SPC h F names the faces under the cursor, so you know exactly what to restyle.
One file to install
A single self-contained binary for Linux (x86_64 and aarch64) and macOS on Apple silicon, with the Scheme runtime built in. Nix users get a flake.
Try it in under a minute.
Download, put it on your PATH, run imp. The start screen links straight to your config.
imp is alpha. It's good enough for daily Vim-style editing, but expect rough edges and changes to the Scheme API. Bug reports are very welcome.
Grab the archive for your platform from the releases page, then:
tar xzf imp-*.tar.gz
install -m 755 imp-*/imp ~/.local/bin/
impOn macOS, clear the quarantine flag first: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/.local/bin/imp
Needs recent stable Rust and a C compiler. No other libraries.
git clone https://github.com/apisandipas/imp && cd imp
make installmake install-tui builds a terminal-only imp. make upgrade pulls and rebuilds.
The right choice on NixOS, where the window needs Nix's graphics libraries.
nix profile install github:apisandipas/impInstalls into ~/.cargo/bin.
cargo install --git https://github.com/apisandipas/imp imp-editorAdd --no-default-features for a terminal-only build.