# antirez/kilo

A text editor in less than 1000 LOC with syntax highlight and search.

Repository: https://github.com/antirez/kilo
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/kilo
Language: C
License: BSD-2-Clause
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-01-04T17:31:45+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3706, "days_push": 606, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 9087, forks 993 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:28.291788+00:00)

## What it is
Kilo is a tiny terminal text editor written in under 1000 lines of C, with syntax highlighting and incremental search, requiring no external libraries. It is designed as a minimal, readable codebase to learn from or extend into more advanced editors and CLI interfaces.

## Use cases
- edit files in a terminal without installing heavy editors
- learn how a terminal text editor works internally
- use as a starting point to build a custom editor or TUI
- quick syntax-highlighted editing over ssh
- study minimal VT100 terminal handling in C

## When to choose
- you need an extremely small, dependency-free terminal editor
- you want readable C source code to learn editor internals from
- you want a base to fork into your own TUI project

## When to avoid
- you need a full-featured editor with plugins, macros, or extensive language support
- you need guaranteed stability - the project is alpha-stage and lightly maintained
- you need Windows-native terminal support without a VT100-compatible terminal

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: editor, terminal-ui, developer-tools
- domain: text-editors, developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: c, minimalist, syntax-highlighting, vt100, educational, small-codebase, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- antirez/kilo (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:28.291788+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:24:00.132979+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/antirez/kilo (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:28.291788+00:00, sha 50bb80624f6f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.