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nova — Roadmap

Phase 1 — Foundation (current, Tauri 2 + React)

Core editor built on Tauri 2 (Rust backend) + React 19 + CodeMirror 6. Target: a usable daily-driver editor at ~80 MB RAM.

Done

  • Multi-tab editor (CodeMirror 6)
  • Syntax highlighting — TS, JS, Rust, Python, Go, JSON, Markdown, HTML, CSS, SQL, Java, C++
  • Vim mode (normal / insert)
  • Relative line numbers
  • Markdown preview (split pane)
  • Multi-session terminal (PTY, per-session Arc)
  • File tree with vscode-style icons (full icon set, no tree-shaking)
  • Git panel — branch, status, stage/unstage, commit, checkout, branch list
  • Fuzzy file opener (Cmd+P)
  • Command palette (Cmd+Shift+P)
  • Autosave with debounce
  • Settings panel (font, tab size, wrap, vim, autocomplete, bracket match)
  • macOS menu bar integration
  • New window (Cmd+Shift+N)
  • New terminal session (Cmd+T)
  • macOS Big Sur squircle app icon (の)
  • Rename ted → nova throughout

Performance (7 fixes shipped)

  • File content out of Zustand → tabContentMap (zero re-renders on keystrokes)
  • CodeMirror Compartments — settings reconfigure without view rebuild
  • PTY per-session Arc — global lock released before I/O
  • PTY output batching — 16 KB reads, flush at 32 KB or 8 ms
  • tokio::fs — async file I/O, no worker thread starvation
  • git_state — single open_repo for branch + status + branches
  • Per-node expandedDirs subscription — O(1) re-renders on dir toggle

Near-term (still on Tauri 2)

  • LSP integration (language server protocol — completions, go-to-def, hover docs)
  • Inline git diff gutter (per-line add/modify/delete markers)
  • Split pane editor (horizontal / vertical)
  • Find & replace panel (global, regex)
  • Workspace search (grep across files)
  • File watcher — auto-reload externally changed files
  • Minimap
  • Lazy-load vscode-icons (reduce JS heap by ~5–8 MB)

Phase 2 — Native (GPUI + pure Rust)

Eliminate the WebView entirely. Target: ~45–60 MB RAM, <100 ms startup, CoreText rendering.

Why

Phase 1 (WebView) Phase 2 (native)
RAM ~80 MB ~45–60 MB
Startup ~400 ms ~80 ms
Font rendering WebKit (good) CoreText / DirectWrite (excellent)
Scroll on large files CodeMirror virtual (good) GPU rasterised (excellent)
Cross-platform cost Low (WebView everywhere) High (per-OS GPU API)

Stack

GPUI  (Zed's Apache 2.0 GPU UI framework)
  ├── Text editor engine    — tree-sitter grammars, incremental parse
  ├── Text shaping          — cosmic-text (BiDi, ligatures, font fallback)
  ├── Terminal renderer     — vte (VT escape parsing) + portable-pty (already have it)
  ├── File tree             — GPUI list view
  ├── Git panel             — nova-git crate (already have it)
  └── File system           — nova-core / tokio::fs (already have it)

What gets thrown away

  • React, Vite, TypeScript frontend
  • CodeMirror 6
  • xterm.js
  • WebView / Tauri
  • All npm dependencies

What gets kept (Rust crates)

  • nova-git — git operations (git2)
  • nova-core — file I/O
  • portable-pty — PTY spawning
  • Tree-sitter grammars

Milestones

  • GPUI prototype — window opens, text renders, cursor moves
  • Basic text editor — insert/delete, undo/redo, syntax highlighting
  • File tree + tab bar
  • Terminal emulator (vte grid renderer in GPUI)
  • Git panel port
  • Vim mode (modal input handling)
  • Settings / theming
  • Feature parity with Phase 1
  • macOS release build — measure actual RAM vs target

Estimated effort

Solo: 6–18 months. GPUI is the only viable shortcut — building on raw wgpu/Skia from scratch would be 2–3 years.

Non-goals (both phases)

  • AI features / copilot integration
  • Plugin system (keep it simple)
  • Windows / Linux support before macOS is solid
  • Electron (never)