Lean Vim: Fast, Minimal, and Focused Editing

Lean Vim starts fast, stays fast, and does exactly what you tell it to do. No bloat. No distractions. Just pure, efficient editing powered by the most stripped-down, performance-focused configuration you can run.

Vim itself is legendary for speed, precision, and control. Lean Vim is that legend sharpened to a single point. It boots instantly. It responds instantly. Your keystrokes land without lag, because every unnecessary plugin, autocmd, and config line is gone.

A Lean Vim setup starts with the default configuration as your core. Add only what directly improves your editing flow. Use lightweight plugins written in pure Vimscript or Lua when possible. Avoid plugin managers that pull in dozens of dependencies. Keep your .vimrc small, with clear, declarative settings.

Focus on speed-critical settings:

• Enable set number and set relativenumber for navigation.
• Use set nowrap and set cursorline only if they help your work.
• Turn on set noswapfile to reduce I/O overhead.
• Map keys carefully and avoid overlapping bindings.

Minimalism in Lean Vim is a discipline. New tools get tested. If they slow startup or add milliseconds to commands, they get removed. Measure performance using --startuptime to ensure changes keep the load time near zero.

Why choose Lean Vim? It increases focus and reduces friction. You spend less time waiting and more time building, editing, and shipping. In large projects, every second saved compounds. Lean Vim is never about fewer features—it’s about the right features.

The result is an editing environment that feels direct, like talking in single syllables: your command, the machine’s action, nothing in between.

Try Lean Vim inside hoop.dev and see it live in minutes.