nucleotide
A native graphical front end for the Helix editor. It keeps Helix's modal editing exactly as it is, and adds a file tree, an integrated terminal and remote workspaces that feel like local ones.
Availability
Releases are packaged for Linux, macOS and Windows. The Windows build is portable: extract the archive into a writable folder and run it. There's no installer or MSI.
Details
Nucleotide uses Helix's own crates (helix-core,
helix-view, helix-lsp and friends) rather
than reimplementing the editor, so keybindings, commands and language
support match upstream Helix. The interface is built with GPUI, the
GPU-accelerated UI framework from Zed. The integrated terminal uses
Ghostty's terminal state machine.
Around the editor you get split views, LSP completion and diagnostics, the usual Helix pickers for files, buffers and commands, and a file tree that shows version-control status and loads directories lazily.
Remote workspaces run a small helper on the far end that handles files, language servers, terminals and processes over SSH or WSL. Remote targets must run Linux. Nucleotide is licensed under the MPL-2.0, the same licence as Helix.