| t (s) | Beat | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| 0.0 | Welcome | ASCII logo + git-branch line — the first-paint state you get after mnml <workspace>. |
| 1.4 | Activity sweep | Five left-rail sections cycle: file tree · HTTP · Integrations · Agents · Git · Notes. Each swap re-populates the info panel at the bottom. |
| 11.4 | Editor | src/main.ts opens; LSP diagnostics render as squiggles + a red count on the bufferline chip. |
| 14.4 | Picker | Ctrl+P fuzzy pick → store.ts. Type a few chars, hit Enter. |
| 18.0 | Which-key | Ctrl+K opens the leader menu; every chord under it is discoverable. |
| 21.0 | Ghost-text | Dim-grey inline suggestion appears at the cursor; Tab accepts it. |
| 25.5 | Hover-help | Mouse dwells over palette-bar chips; the info-view panel updates in real time. |
| 29.5 | Settings | Settings overlay opens, arrow keys nav the rows. |
| 33.5 | Right cluster | Statusline chips light up: Claude usage sparkline, coverage badge, mixr now-playing. |
| 45.5 | Split right | view.split_right opens a second pane; notes.http loads in it. |
| 49.0 | Terminal | term.shell_bottom docks a Pty pane; two commands run. |
| 57.0 | Hero shot | Composite dwell: tree · editor · http · terminal on-screen at once. |
Short per-feature tapes for the surfaces the hero above only glances at:
Ghost-text — type a function stub, Tab accepts the suggestion.
| t (s) | Beat | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| 0.0 | Welcome dwell + open store.ts |
The editor lands on an existing TypeScript file. |
| 3.0 | Jump to EOF, add a blank line | Cursor moves to end-of-file, room to type. |
| 3.8 | Type a function signature | Cursor blinks at the open paren. |
| 7.0 | Seed ghost suggestion | A dim-grey continuation appears at the cursor. |
| 9.5 | Dwell on the ghost text | Read what mnml proposes. |
| 12.0 | Tab — accept |
The completion becomes real text. |
| 14.0 | Cursor nudge + dwell | The accepted code sits at the caret. |
mnml is a terminal IDE that takes NvChad’s aesthetic — file-tree rail, tabline, powerline statusline, Nerd-Font devicons, tree-sitter highlighting — and marries it to VSCode’s discoverability — command palette, activity bar, right-click menus, mouse-first chrome, and a modeless keymap that doesn’t hide anything behind a modifier. Under both surfaces sits one design decision: a pluggable input layer. Vim modal editing and the modeless standard keymap are both first-class, both fully remappable, and swappable at runtime. The editor, buffer, and render layers never branch on which one is active.
Install with brew install chris-mclennan/tap/mnml on macOS, winget install mnml on Windows, cargo install mnml-rs anywhere Rust runs (needs zig 0.16.0 + git on PATH — the build script emits a helpful error if either is missing) — or grab the portable tarball for your platform.
Two editing modes, one codebase
Modal vim (Normal / Insert / Visual / Visual-Block / Replace + a : ex-command line with :%s///, ranges, :g/, :norm, :sort, :!cmd, user-defined :commands) and a modeless VS Code-style keymap (multi-cursor with Ctrl-D, column cursors). Swap live with :set input=vim. Input handlers translate keys into a closed set of edit operations; the rest of the app is mode-agnostic.
LSP, batteries included
Completion with docs, hover, go-to-definition / references / rename-with-preview, code actions, inlay hints, semantic tokens, document & call / type hierarchies, signature help, document colors, code lens, document links, format-on-save, external linters (eslint / ruff / shellcheck), a Problems pane. A Mason-style tools picker auto-installs servers / formatters / linters.
Rich git
Gutter signs, a 3-mode diff pane (Hunk / Inline / Split) with per-hunk staging, intraline highlighting, a staging view, a coloured-lane commit DAG with sortable columns + WIP row, a branch / worktree / PR rail, blame gutter, fetch / pull / push / cherry-pick / revert / tags / stash / reflog, AI-written commit messages.
Fuzzy everything
File finder, command palette, buffer switcher, symbol picker, marks / clipboard / recent-commands pickers, a which-key leader popup — all over one fuzzy-match core. Ripgrep-backed workspace grep with cross-file replace. Multi-root workspaces.
AI panes — Claude Code & Codex
Run the claude CLI or Codex as embedded panes, with multi-session tab strips and :rename. Or talk to the Anthropic Messages API directly with an agentic read-only tool loop — backend, model, system prompt, and token cap are all config knobs. On-selection actions (explain / fix / refactor / write-tests) stream into a pane; fix and refactor apply as reviewed diffs. Inline suggestions via API or a fully local in-process FIM model (fim-engine, no API key, offline after a one-time download).
Baked-in HTTP client
Send .http / .curl / .rest files with {{variable}} templating + environments + pre / post-request scripts. Editable form-style request pane (method / URL / headers / body), re-send, copy-as-curl. Request chains (.chain.json). OpenAPI / Swagger → .curl stub discovery. CLI mode: mnml run FILE, mnml chain run FILE, mnml discover SPEC.
Browser + CDP capture
Launch Chrome over DevTools Protocol as a browser pane — live console, filtered network log, DOM tree with live highlight, cookies, web storage, performance panel. Capture full-page or per-node screenshots, print-to-PDF, snapshot diffs, device emulation, multi-target, headless support.
Debugging (DAP)
Debug Adapter Protocol client — launch or attach, breakpoints (conditional, hit-count, exception), step controls, call-stack pane, variables tree with set-variable, watch expressions, REPL pane with lazy-expand. Reverse-debugging where the adapter supports it.
SCM & CI dashboards
Pipelines / builds and pull requests across Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps, grouped by repo with per-branch and “mine” views. PR ↔ pipeline cross-navigation. Per-job log tail with severity colouring.
Testing & quality
Playwright runner with a grouped results pane, jump-to-source, trace-timeline viewer, flaky-test dashboard. A line-based .test end-to-end format (open, key, type, command, click, expect screen ...) that drives the real App against a virtual backend — same code path as the GUI.
UI & polish
94 NvChad base46 themes (onedark / gruvbox / catppuccin / kanagawa / tokyonight / nord / dracula / …). Tree-sitter highlighting for 39+ languages with language injection (fenced code blocks, embedded <script> / <style>). Markdown preview with inline image rendering via Kitty / iTerm2 graphics protocols. Zen mode, sticky scope context, indent guides, hover tooltips, right-click menus, a keyboard-driven settings overlay.
Headless + scriptable
mnml --headless renders to a virtual screen driven over a file-IPC channel (command in, screen.txt / status.json / events.jsonl out) — same App and draw path as the terminal UI. Out-of-process plugins over that channel can register commands that appear in the palette and resolve as keybindings. :term <binary> opens any TUI binary as a Pty pane.
Integration SDK — ~40 siblings on crates.io
Every non-core tool ships as its own crate. Jira / Bitbucket / GitHub / Slack / Teams / Docker / an AWS suite (Amplify, CodeBuild, CloudWatch, Cognito, DynamoDB, ECR, ECS, EventBridge, Lambda, RDS, Redshift, SNS, SQS) / a database driver family / more. Each installs with <integration> --install, declares its config via a [[auth]] schema, hot-refreshes at runtime, and is auto-updatable. Build your own with mnml-bridge (the wire protocol) + a couple hundred lines of Rust.
The manual goes deep on each surface — what’s there, how to drive it, the keymaps, the config knobs.
mnml is one of three small Rust tools by Chris McLennan. They share design language and run perfectly well standalone in any terminal.
mixr.show.