Vim

At a glance

What Vim does

Modal editing, Regex search/replace, Command composability, VimScript plugins, Copilot plugin

Best for

Terminal-native development, efficiency-focused workflows, Unix/Linux developers

Works well with

Conflicts & caveats

• Continue.dev only supports VS Code and JetBrains — your IDE is Vim.
• Cursor built-in only runs inside the Cursor editor — your IDE is Vim.
• Cline only supports VS Code and JetBrains IDEs — your IDE is Vim.
• Windsurf Cascade only runs inside Windsurf — your IDE is Vim.
• Sourcegraph Cody does not officially support Vim — use VS Code, JetBrains, or Visual Studio.
• Amazon Q Developer does not officially support Vim — use VS Code or JetBrains.
• JetBrains AI Assistant only runs inside JetBrains IDEs — your IDE is Vim.
• Qodo officially supports VS Code and JetBrains — your IDE is Vim.
• Supermaven only supports VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, and Zed — your IDE is Vim.
• Roo Code runs as a VS Code-compatible extension — your IDE is Vim.
• Kilo Code runs as a VS Code-compatible extension — your IDE is Vim.
• Zed Agent only runs inside the Zed editor — your IDE is Vim.
• Amp (Sourcegraph) officially supports VS Code and JetBrains — your IDE is Vim. Use the CLI version otherwise.
• Sourcegraph Cody (Enterprise) supports VS Code, JetBrains, and Visual Studio — your IDE is Vim.
• Cursor CLI works in any terminal but needs an active Cursor subscription — your IDE is Vim, which is fine but the cost is tied to Cursor.
• @codebase indexing is a Cursor-only feature, but your IDE is Vim.
• Cursor Background Agents are dispatched from Cursor (desktop or mobile) — your IDE is Vim.