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A comment on Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST.

Re:Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST by __MatrixMan__ on Saturday March 07, 2026 @05:21PM (#47292026)
I think the challenge with AST editing is discoverability. Like, I know what I want to select, I can see it there on the screen, but I don't know its name.

I've been dreaming of writing a plugin that surrounded the cursor in differently colored scopes. So instead of "next function" I'd be thinking "next blue" (blue being the color that functions are currently painted in).

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Re:Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST by hou32hou on Saturday March 07, 2026 @06:42PM (#47292618)
In Ki you don't have to know the name of the syntax node, you can just press `d m`, and the editor will show the labels of all the syntax node visible that you can jump to.
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Re:Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST by __MatrixMan__ on Saturday March 07, 2026 @07:15PM (#47292899)
Oh neat, I'm gonna give it a try!
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Re:Ki Editor - an editor that operates on the AST by wtetzner on Saturday March 07, 2026 @05:52PM (#47292265)
I think there's still value in generic AST-level operations. Like expand selection and shrink selection. Or select around the current node vs select inside (whatever that means for the current node type).
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