A highly experimental general purpose interactive interface for neovim.

NOTE:

• This plugin is still under development
• It depends on an experimental feature in neovim nightly (vim._extui)

This plugin provides an api for an optional unified interactive buffer interface. Instead of having one plugin open a floating popup for fuzzy file search, another showing a completion menu at the bottom, another drawing commandline completions above the status bar and yet another drawing a general purpose picker in a different location, you can choose to have one place where interactive input can be shown that feels native to the editor and is predictable. This includes:

• Running commands with completion.
• Fuzzy finding files or buffers.
• Searching text across a project.
• Input prompts for LSP or Git actions.
• Even interactive plugin UIs (think Telescope, fzf, etc).
• Display timely content (think which-key.nvim or mini.pick)

For Neovim, something like this could replace the ad-hoc popup/floating windows many plugins use, giving us a consistent workflow: a single expandable buffer for all kinds of input and interactive tasks.

The goal of this plugin is to eventually put some form of lua/minibuffer/core.lua into neovim core if desired by the maintainers.

Since this interface exists as plugin for now, it will require an integration layer with other plugins to use their backend. I have integration implementations in lua/minibuffer/integrations.

• neovim >= 0.12 (currently on nightly)
• Extui enable somewhere early in your init.lua:

require("vim._extui").enable({ enable = true, msg = { target = "msg" } })

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENABLED vim._extui (See prerequisites)

• mini.deps

MiniDeps.now(function()
  MiniDeps.add({
    source = "simifalaye/minibuffer.nvim",
  })

  local minibuffer = require("minibuffer")

  vim.ui.select = require("minibuffer.builtin.ui_select")
  vim.ui.input = require("minibuffer.builtin.ui_input")

  vim.keymap.set("n", "<M-;>", require("minibuffer.builtin.cmdline"))
  vim.keymap.set("n", "<M-.>", function()
    minibuffer.resume(true)
  end)
end)

• lazy.nvim

{
  "simifalaye/minibuffer.nvim",
  init = function()
    local minibuffer = require("minibuffer")

    vim.ui.select = require("minibuffer.builtin.ui_select")
    vim.ui.input = require("minibuffer.builtin.ui_input")

    vim.keymap.set("n", "<M-;>", require("minibuffer.builtin.cmdline"))
    vim.keymap.set("n", "<M-.>", function()
      minibuffer.resume(true)
    end)
  end,
}

I have written a few usable examples for this interface for demonstration.

vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>.", require("minibuffer.examples.files"))
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>,", require("minibuffer.examples.buffers"))
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>/", require("minibuffer.examples.live-grep"))
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>o", function()
  require("minibuffer.examples.oldfiles")({ cwd = vim.fn.getcwd() })
end)
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>O", require("minibuffer.examples.oldfiles"))

These integrations are mostly for demonstration purposes as proper support will best happen inside each plugin themselves. Changes to each plugin repo could break the integration.

-- NOTE: after loading plugin
local wk_mb = require("minibuffer.integrations.which-key")
local wk_view = require("which-key.view")
wk_view.show = wk_mb.show
wk_view.hide = wk_mb.hide

-- NOTE: after loading plugin
local picker_ui = require("fff.picker_ui")
picker_ui.open = require("minibuffer.integrations.fff")

NOTE:

• Not tested with extra pickers found in mini-extra
• live-grep does not work yet, feel free to use the live-grep picker from the examples

-- NOTE: after loading plugin
local pick_mb = require("minibuffer.integrations.mini-pick")
pick.is_picker_active = pick_mb.is_picker_active
pick.set_picker_items = pick_mb.set_picker_items
pick.start = pick_mb.start