SmartEdit: A Powerful and Extensible CLI Editor

Welcome to SmartEdit, the pinnacle of command-line text editing. Engineered by the visionary team at Smart Tell line, this tool is a testament to the belief that terminal-based coding can be both powerful and beautiful. SmartEdit goes beyond the basic functionalities of traditional CLI editors, offering a fully featured, responsive, and highly efficient environment designed for the modern developer.

With SmartEdit, you get a clean, uncluttered interface that automatically adapts to your terminal, freeing you from the distractions of complex IDEs. Its intelligent design, robust feature set, and extensible architecture make it the perfect choice for everything from quick configuration file edits to deep-dive coding sessions.

✨ Why Choose SmartEdit?

• Exceptional Performance: Built with a focus on speed, SmartEdit is lightweight and responsive, handling large files with ease and minimal latency.
• Intuitive UX: We've designed SmartEdit with a familiar set of keyboard shortcuts and behaviors, so you can start using it effectively from the moment you install it.
• Fully Responsive: Whether you're on a large monitor or a small terminal window, SmartEdit's UI adapts beautifully, ensuring your code is always presented clearly without horizontal scrolling.
• A Developer's Tool: SmartEdit's features are tailored specifically to the needs of software developers.
• Community-Driven: SmartEdit is open source, and we actively encourage contributions to make it the best CLI editor in the world.

🚀 Key Features in Detail

Robust Editing & Navigation

SmartEdit offers a complete suite of editing tools, making it a true replacement for basic terminal editors.

• Undo/Redo: Our stack-based system captures every keystroke and action, allowing you to Ctrl + Z to revert changes and Ctrl + Y to reapply them. This provides an invaluable safety net for all your coding sessions.
• Copy/Paste/Cut: The editor provides standard Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, and Ctrl + X shortcuts, which work with both single characters and multi-line text blocks.
• Effortless Navigation: In addition to standard arrow keys, you can jump to the beginning of a line with Ctrl + A and the end with Ctrl + E. Page Up and Page Down provide fast vertical scrolling for navigating large files.
• Toggle Blinking Cursor: Use Ctrl + R to enable or disable the blinking cursor for the current session.

Adaptive and Clean Interface

SmartEdit's UI is built on a responsive grid system. The moment you resize your terminal, the editor's display adapts in real-time. Line numbers, content, and the status bar are all dynamically adjusted to the new dimensions. This ensures that you get a clear, unobstructed view of your code, regardless of your terminal size.

• Custom Blinking Cursor: A visually distinct blinking pipe '|' indicates the current typing position, which can be toggled on/off with Ctrl + R.
• Simplified Path Display: The editor's title and status bar now display only the filename for a cleaner UI, while internally retaining the full path for saving.

🛠️ Installation & Usage

SmartEdit is published on the official NPM registry and can be easily installed with a single command.

Installation

You can install SmartEdit globally on your system to make the smartedit command accessible from any directory.

# Global installation using npm
npm install -g smartedit

Alternatively, you can use npx to run SmartEdit without a global installation. This is useful for temporary use or in restricted environments.

# Run without installing using npx
npx smartedit

Basic Usage

To open an existing file or create a new one, type smartedit followed by the filename. The editor's UI will display only the filename for a cleaner experience, while internally managing the full path for saving.

# Open 'main.py' or create it if it doesn't exist
smartedit main.py

# Open a file with a full path
smartedit /home/user/projects/my-app/src/index.js

📜 Detailed Code Documentation (A Deep Dive)

This section is for developers interested in the architecture and internal workings of SmartEdit. We will break down the key functions and how they contribute to the editor's overall functionality.

Core Rendering Loop

The heart of SmartEdit is its rendering loop. It's a simple yet powerful design: on every key press, the editor's state is updated, the screen is cleared, and the UI is redrawn. This ensures that the display is always a perfect reflection of the current state.

drawEditor()

Purpose: The central rendering function.

Code Breakdown:

1. clearScreen() is called to reset the terminal.
2. The file content (fileContent array) is iterated over.
3. Line numbers are generated and displayed.
4. The content is printed to the terminal, with a custom blinking cursor at the current typing position.
5. The status bar is rendered.

getVisualWidth(text)

Purpose: To handle the editor's responsive layout.

Code Breakdown:

• getVisualWidth() uses a regular expression to count the characters without including ANSI codes, providing the true on-screen width of a string.

🤝 Contribution Guidelines

We are committed to building SmartEdit together with the community. Your contributions are invaluable.

• Repository: https://github.com/Codeleafly/Smartedit
• Issues: Found a bug? Have a feature request? Please open an issue on the GitHub repository.
• Pull Requests: If you want to contribute code, please fork the repository, make your changes on a new branch, and submit a pull request. We will review it as soon as possible.

Development Setup

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/Codeleafly/Smartedit.git
2. Install dependencies: npm install
3. Run the development version: node smartedit.js <filename>

We follow a clean, well-commented code style. Please ensure your contributions adhere to this standard.

🏢 About Smart Tell line!

Smart Tell line is a leading technology company specializing in innovative developer tools and solutions. Our mission is to create software that empowers engineers to work more efficiently and enjoy their craft. SmartEdit is our flagship CLI tool, and we are dedicated to its continuous development and improvement.

📄 License

SmartEdit is an open-source project created and maintained by Smart Tell line. It is released under the MIT License.

Copyright © 2025 Smart Tell line. All Rights Reserved.