Midnight Commander has always been my favorite terminal file manager. It's feature-rich, fast, and actually tries to be a file manager compared to modern alternatives. However, there are quite some features that I never used, and I couldn't configure a Vim bindings that works well for me.
With OpenCode, I can finally make my own terminal file manager. I borrowed the main design concepts from Midnight Commander and some behavior from NVim-Tree file explorer.
I hope you would like it, at least I do. Since this project is entirely vibe-coded, so I'm not going to accept PR from the community, but feel free to open issues and fork it.
I don't think the level of reliability necessary for a file manager is achievable with vibe coding. This is an area where small bugs can cause immediate and catastrophic data loss.
If you're shopping for a file manager, I recommend avoiding any project that incorporates a significant amount of LLM-generated code. Maybe in theory it could be reviewed as thoroughly as handwritten code; in practice that never happens.
My first impression is not great. Several clicks in the docs - no screenshots to see how it looks like. The very first thing advertised on their GitHub - some "#1 coding agent". And again - no screenshots. Some flashing unpleasant video. "Written in Rust", which is becoming a meme, like if a user should care.
Maybe it's a good file manager but, imo, authors completely failed to advertise it right.
I actually used Yazi a while back. And it's definitely >100x more robust and production-ready than what I iterated for ~3 hours :). And I have no doubt that it is probably way faster.
The only problem for me is that it's not how I use a file manager. I learned to have two parallel windows when moving files, even before I learned how to use a terminal. That's why Midnight Commander was feeling so great. Until the day that I wanted to eliminate my usage of function keys and was tired of maintaining a config file. Some may say I "overkilled" it just to get rid of a config file..
I think it is interesting that these pieces of software are now being inspired by Midnight Commander and are being built by people who never worked with or experiences the original, Norton Commander.
Author here. Haha, thanks for all the feedback! I don't even want to pretend this is production-ready. When I vibe-coded this, the only user I had in mind was me. And I have to live with the consequence of unreliability.
I recently found that writing personal software through a coding agent is a fairly interesting endeavour. It's like I'm paying to get the software I need in the form of tokens.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 29.8 ms ] threadWith OpenCode, I can finally make my own terminal file manager. I borrowed the main design concepts from Midnight Commander and some behavior from NVim-Tree file explorer.
I hope you would like it, at least I do. Since this project is entirely vibe-coded, so I'm not going to accept PR from the community, but feel free to open issues and fork it.
If you're shopping for a file manager, I recommend avoiding any project that incorporates a significant amount of LLM-generated code. Maybe in theory it could be reviewed as thoroughly as handwritten code; in practice that never happens.
Maybe it's a good file manager but, imo, authors completely failed to advertise it right.
The only problem for me is that it's not how I use a file manager. I learned to have two parallel windows when moving files, even before I learned how to use a terminal. That's why Midnight Commander was feeling so great. Until the day that I wanted to eliminate my usage of function keys and was tired of maintaining a config file. Some may say I "overkilled" it just to get rid of a config file..
Vibe coded or not, that's what puts me off from most nc/dn/mc reimplementations.
If you can't reach the command line by just typing the command, what's the point?
At least on this one you don't have to mouse click somewhere...
I recently found that writing personal software through a coding agent is a fairly interesting endeavour. It's like I'm paying to get the software I need in the form of tokens.
Norton Commander.
Know and respect your elders.