Last Updated on March 9, 2026
ad (pronounced A.D.) is an attempt at combining a modal editing interface of likes of vi and kakoune with the approach to extensibility of Plan9’s Acme. Inside of ad text is something you can execute as well as edit.
ad is aiming to be a hybrid of the pieces of various editors:
- vim style modal editing.
- convenient text navigation and selection from vim/kakoune.
- mini-buffer based user defined minor modes from emacs.
- sam/acme style editing commands for larger editing actions.
- acme style extension through exposing editor state and functionality for external client programs.
- support for mouse based navigation and selection but not requiring that as the main way of using the editor like in acme.
ad is not trying to replace vim (or kakoune, or emacs) in terms of being a massively hackable editor. Rather it is trying to follow the philosophy of acme in being an integratING development environment (rather than integratED).
This is free and open source software.
Website: github.com/sminez/ad
Support:
Developer: Innes Anderson-Morrison
License: MIT License
ad is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Vim-like Text Editors | |
|---|---|
| Neovim | Vim-fork focused on extensibility and usability |
| Helix | Kakoune / Neovim inspired editor. |
| Lapce | Modern editor in Rust which uses native GUI and GPU rendering |
| NvChad | Neovim config aiming to provide a base configuration |
| LunarVim | IDE layer for Neovim |
| Kakoune | Implements Vi’s "keystrokes as a text editing language" model |
| Vis | Combining modal editing with structural regular expressions |
| vile | Text editor that combines aspects of the Emacs and vi editors |
| pyvim | Implementation of Vim in Python |
| gVim | Vim with a built-in GUI |
| amp | Vim-like editor written in Rust |
| Vy | Vim-like in Python made from scratch |
| moe | Command-line editor inspired by Vim |
| ad | Adaptable text editor |
| Levee | Also known as Captain Video |
| xvi | Portable multi-file text editor |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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