Reef

AI 时代的最小开发者终端 The minimal dev terminal for the AI coding era

Once AI writes your code, 90% of an IDE becomes dead weight. Reef is the other 10%.

---

Why

When AI writes most of your code, an IDE's surface shrinks to four things: browsing files, reading files, searching, and walking git diffs before a commit. Reef is a terminal workbench for exactly that — and nothing else.

No autocomplete. No linter. No language server. Not even a text editor. Write with your AI tool of choice; come here to read and ship.

What's in the box

• Files tab — tree navigator with a read-only preview pane
• Git tab — status, stage / unstage (keyboard or double-click), unified or side-by-side diff, compact or full-file context
• Keyboard first, mouse where it earns its keep — drag to resize the split, double-click to toggle staging, scroll the panel under the cursor
• Persistent prefs — diff layout and mode survive restarts

Architecture

Reef is a host plus plugins. Plugins are isolated subprocesses that speak JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdin/stdout using LSP-style framing. They return StyledLine[]; the host renders them with ratatui. The manifest format mirrors VSCode's contributes.*.

The name is the architecture: a reef is built up by many small independent organisms living next to each other. Each plugin is its own process; together they are the workspace.

See docs/plugin-protocol.md for the full protocol.

Install

Via npm (recommended):

# Run without installing
npx @reef-tui/cli

# Or install globally
npm install -g @reef-tui/cli
reef

The correct native binary for your platform is selected automatically. Supported: macOS (arm64, x64), Linux (arm64, x64), Windows (x64).

Build from source:

# Release build is required — the bundled git plugin's manifest
# points at target/release/reef-git.
cargo build --release

# Run from inside any git repo:
cd your-git-repo
/path/to/reef/target/release/reef

Reef exits immediately if the current directory isn't inside a git repo.

Plugin discovery

Reef searches three locations, in order:

1. <reef binary>/plugins/ — shipped alongside the binary
2. <workspace>/plugins/ — dev mode, when running from this repo
3. ~/.config/reef/plugins/ — user plugins

Each plugin is a directory containing a reef.json manifest and an executable.

Keybindings

Global

Key	Action
q, Ctrl+C	quit
1 / 2	Files / Git tab
Tab	cycle tabs
Shift+Tab	switch focused panel
h	help
v	toggle mouse capture (for terminal text selection)

Files tab

Key	Action
↑/↓, j/k	navigate
PgUp / PgDn	page
Enter	expand/collapse directory
r	rebuild tree

Git tab

Key	Action
s / u	stage / unstage
r	refresh
t	tree / flat view
m	unified ↔ side-by-side
f	compact ↔ full-file diff

Status

Alpha. Bundled plugin: git. Host-native: file tree and preview. On the roadmap as standalone plugins: file-search, grep, a richer file-viewer.