Helix

Helix is a modal text editor for the terminal that works out of the box. No plugins, no config files, no weekend lost to dotfile management. You open it and it has syntax highlighting, LSP support (the thing that gives you autocomplete and go-to-definition), and tree-sitter parsing already working.

Rust, MPL 2.0. The key design difference from Vim: Helix uses selection-first editing. You select text, then act on it, the opposite of Vim's verb-then-object model. It sounds small but it changes how editing feels. Multiple cursors are built in. The fuzzy file picker, buffer manager, and LSP integration all ship with the binary.

Fully free. No paid tier, no cloud version, no premium features. One binary, every platform. Solo developers who want a fast terminal editor without the Neovim plugin rabbit hole, this is it. Teams don't really factor in; text editors are personal choices.

The catch: if you have years of Vim muscle memory, the selection-first model is a hard rewrite of your reflexes. And the plugin system doesn't exist yet; what ships is what you get. If you need a specific integration that isn't built in, you're stuck waiting for the core team to add it.