soe

Active Rust 2026

Scott's Own Editor — a built-in TUI text editor for CLI tools, so nobody gets dropped into vim unwillingly.

When a command line tool needs a message from you — a commit message, a ticket body — it shells out to whatever $EDITOR says. If that’s unset, or set to something the user doesn’t actually know how to exit, you’ve just ruined their afternoon.

soe is a Rust crate that resolves the best available editor using Git’s own precedence order and falls back to a built-in TUI editor when none is configured. One call, and your tool always has a working editor.

What it does

Editor resolution: $GIT_EDITOR → core.editor → $VISUAL → $EDITOR → built-in TUI
Menu bar (File / Help), line numbers, word navigation
Mouse support — click to position the cursor, scroll to move
Two modes: PlainText and CommitMessage (72-char guide line, soft wrap)
Save with Ctrl+S to return the content, Esc to cancel and return nothing

Built on ratatui and crossterm.