Kasane: New drop-in Kakoune front end with GPU rendering and WASM Plugins

Kakoune handles editing. Kasane rebuilds the rendering pipeline — terminal or GPU — and opens the full UI to extension: splits, image display, workspace persistence, and beyond. Extend it yourself with sandboxed WASM plugins — a complete one fits in 15 lines of Rust. Your kakrc works unchanged.

GPU backend (--ui gui) — fuzzy finder, pane splits, and color preview are all WASM plugins

Getting Started · What's Different · Plugin Development · Vision

What You Get

alias kak=kasane and these improvements apply automatically:

Flicker-free rendering — no more tearing on redraws
Multi-pane without tmux — native splits with per-pane status bars
Clipboard that just works — Wayland, X11, macOS, SSH — no xclip needed
Correct Unicode — CJK and emoji display correctly regardless of terminal

Add --ui gui for a GPU backend with system font rendering, smooth animations, and inline image display.

Existing Kakoune plugins (kak-lsp, …) work as before. See What's Different for the full list.

Quick Start

Note

Requires Kakoune 2024.12.09 or later. Binary packages skip the Rust toolchain requirement.

Arch Linux: yay -S kasane-bin · macOS: brew install Yus314/kasane/kasane · Nix: nix run github:Yus314/kasane · From source: cargo install --path kasane

kasane file.txt # your Kakoune config works unchanged alias kak=kasane # add to .bashrc / .zshrc

GPU backend: cargo install --path kasane --features gui, then kasane --ui gui.

See Getting Started for detailed setup.

Plugins

Plugins can add floating overlays, line annotations, virtual text, code folding, gutter decorations, input handling, scroll policies, and more. Bundled example plugins you can try today:

Plugin

What it does

cursor-line

Highlight the active line with theme-aware colors

fuzzy-finder

fzf-powered file picker as a floating overlay

sel-badge

Show selection count in the status bar

color-preview

Inline color swatches next to hex values

pane-manager

Tmux-like splits with Ctrl+W — no external multiplexer needed

image-preview

Display images in a floating overlay anchored to the cursor

smooth-scroll

Animated scrolling

prompt-highlight

Visual feedback when entering prompt mode

Each plugin builds into a single .kpk package — sandboxed, composable, and ready to install. A complete plugin in 15 lines — here is sel-badge in its entirety:

kasane_plugin_sdk::define_plugin! { manifest: "kasane-plugin.toml",

state {
    #\[bind(host\_state::get\_cursor\_count(), on: dirty::BUFFER)\]
    cursor\_count: u32 = 0,
},

slots {
    STATUS\_RIGHT(dirty::BUFFER) => |\_ctx| {
        (state.cursor\_count > 1).then(|| {
            auto\_contribution(text(&format!(" {} sel ", state.cursor\_count), default\_face()))
        })
    },
},

}

Start writing your own:

kasane plugin new my-plugin # scaffold from 6 templates kasane plugin dev # hot-reload while you edit

See Plugin Development and Plugin API.

Status

Kasane is stable as a Kakoune frontend — ready for daily use. The plugin API is evolving; see Plugin Development for the current ABI version and migration guides.

Usage

kasane [options] [kak-options] [file]... [+<line>[:<col>]|+:]

All Kakoune arguments work — kasane passes them through to kak.

kasane file.txt # Edit a file kasane -c project # Connect to existing session kasane -s myses file.txt # Named session kasane --ui gui file.txt # GPU backend kasane -l # List sessions (delegates to kak)

See docs/config.md for configuration.