Toast launches as an opinionated terminal IDE with managed LSPs and built-in file tree

A terminal IDE that works from the first launch

Toast, a new open-source code editor written in Go, debuted on Hacker News in a Show HN post linking to its GitHub repository. The pitch targets a familiar frustration: developers who want to live in the terminal but resent the hours of configuration that vim, Neovim, and emacs often require. According to the project's README, Toast arrives with the pieces already in place — managed language servers, an integrated file tree, tabbed editing, and themes included from the start.

The README is candid that the project is in early development and that users should expect to encounter bugs.

What is in the box

The feature list reads more like a desktop editor than a TUI. Toast offers multi-tab editing with unsaved-changes indicators, mouse-close buttons on tabs, and a quit confirmation prompt. Syntax highlighting runs on tree-sitter and covers Go, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, CSS, HTML, YAML, Bash, and Markdown. A sidebar file tree shows git status, dims ignored files, supports create and delete actions, watches for file changes, and can be resized by dragging.

Search works at two levels: project-wide search is powered by ripgrep, while in-file find and replace supports next and previous navigation, match-case, and whole-word matching. A command palette, opened with Ctrl+Shift+P, fuzzy-searches every available action and displays keybinding hints and live toggle state. There is also a Markdown preview, mouse support throughout, and auto-save that writes dirty buffers to disk after a configurable idle period — 300 milliseconds by default — with a manual mode available for those who prefer explicit saves.

Managed language servers and editing intelligence

The headline differentiator is what the project calls managed language servers. When Toast detects a missing server for Go, Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or Markdown, it offers to install it, and the configuration can be extended to other languages — the README shows Zig wired up through zls. On top of completions, hover information, and go-to-definition (hold Ctrl and hover to underline a symbol with a target, then Ctrl-click to jump, or press F12 at the cursor), the language server harper also powers spell checking, underlining misspelled words in Markdown and plain-text files in the theme's diagnostic color.

Configuration, themes, and install paths

Toast reads ~/.config/toast/config. at startup, covering tab width, auto-indent, whitespace cleanup on save, sidebar behavior, and ignored patterns. Every keybinding can be remapped, and passing an empty list unbinds an action entirely. Three themes ship built in — system, which derives its palette from the terminal's colors at runtime, plus toast-dark and toast-light — and a migrate-theme command can import an existing VS Code theme file.

Installation options include Homebrew on macOS (brew install paradise-runner/tap/toast), prebuilt release archives, or building from source with Go 1.25.2 or newer. There is also an experimental standalone macOS app that bundles Toast inside a libghostty terminal window with a native menu bar and dock icon; the README warns it has more bugs than the TUI and, because the app is not yet code-signed or notarized, Gatekeeper blocks a plain double-click on first launch.

Why it matters

The README's own comparison table frames the positioning: vim and emacs offer neither AI features nor telemetry, but they also ship without a built-in file tree or mouse support, while VS Code and Zed bundle those conveniences alongside AI features and telemetry. Toast is aiming at the intersection — a terminal-native editor with the privacy posture of a classic Unix tool and the out-of-the-box ergonomics of a graphical IDE. Automatic language-server installation removes what is arguably the biggest friction point in terminal-based editing, which helps explain why tools like Helix and prebuilt Neovim distributions have found audiences. Toast itself is young, explicitly buggy, and will need to prove staying power, but the launch signals continued demand for opinionated tools that treat the terminal as a destination rather than a starting point.