tl;dr: this is an experimental C# IDE, intended to be used alongside an external agentic AI that runs in its own thang (such as Claude Code's TUI (flawed though it may be)).
it used to support free-text input - you know, like a normal editor - but I decided to make it a "read-only IDE", and am adding refactor tools, instead. (read-only solves more problems than allowing live editing solved.)
🧚 hey, listen! you can support my development of open-source software on Patreon, and/or check out my game Astromino, on Steam!
I love Rider - it's been my favorite C# IDE for years - but like all IDEs, it's a resource hog that eats laptop batteries for breakfast, and I get why: Rider & Visual Studio are built to support every use case anyone ever wanted and asked for.
but of all the features Rider offers, I've only used very few; with agentic AIs, I use fewer still. I barely type code at all anymore!
(I've tried vscode various times over the years: its UI/UX is simply not to my liking, and their C# support has always lagged, and it's an electron app?! that's extra weight++!)
so, like any ridiculous dev, I've decided to "just" make my own...
ultimately: to reach a point where I'm comfortable uninstalling Rider. I did it :P
| feature | status |
|---|---|
| syntax highlighting (C#, JSON, XML) | ✅ |
| a decent-ish & modern-ish look & feel | ✅ |
| jump to declaration | ✔ - could use a UI pass |
| find usages | ✔ - could use a UI pass |
| global search, w/ regex if you want it | ✔ - could use a UI pass |
| solution-wide warnings & errors view | ✔ - could use a UI pass |
| NuGet package management | ✔ - could use a UI pass |
| feature | status |
|---|---|
| navigate interface implementations & inheritance trees | ❌ |
| nice test result UI (not just console output) | ❌ |
| highlighting warnings & errors | ❌ |
| rename symbol | ❓ - needs more testing |
| other refactors? | ❌ |
- custom window chrome
- scanning the entire solution when the IDE starts up
- settings that require a built-in search tool
- hand-typed edits — the editor is a read-only window onto an authoritative disk; external tools (the agentic AI, CLI git) do the writing, and the view reconciles disk → view on focus and before every operation. Operation-driven writes (NuGet, refactors) stay. Fixing a one-char typo now goes through the agent or an external editor — deliberately.