textli

A lightweight text editor with focused writing and reading in mind.

textli is a full-window, distraction-free Markdown editor: one warm paper-toned column of text, vim keybindings, and nothing else on screen. ⌘R flips the source into a rendered reading view made for proof-reading and review — navigate with vim motions, leave inline comments, and propose suggestions (track changes) that the author accepts or rejects with a keystroke. All annotations are stored inline as CriticMarkup, so they travel with the file and diff cleanly in git — no sidecar files.

textli started life as the editor inside grafli, the keyboard-driven diagram tool, and is now its own package — usable standalone or embeddable in any PySide6 application.

Install

uv tool install textli-editor   # or: pipx / pip install textli-editor

The package publishes as textli-editor (plain textli is too close to an existing PyPI name), but everywhere else it's just textli: the command is textli, the import is import textli.

Use

textli notes.md                     # open (created on first save)
textli notes.md#design-decisions    # jump straight to a heading
textli -r review.md                 # start in the reading view

The editor opens ready to type (vim NORMAL mode) and autosaves while you work, and every file resumes where you left it — view mode, caret and scroll included. It also watches the open file, so edits made outside textli (an agent applying your comments, a git checkout) reload in place without a restart. A faint whisper status in the card's corner keeps you oriented — mode, word count, and session delta while writing; the section you're in, progress, minutes left, and open review items while reading. Press F1 inside the editor for the complete key reference, or see the documentation.

The short version

Key	Action
⌘R	Toggle write ↔ reading view
Esc	Save & close (⇧Esc cancels)
⌘↵	Full-window width
⌘.	Section focus (dim all but the current paragraph / section)
f	Focus reading mode — caret-locked centre line + gradient spotlight (reading view)
⌘T	Typewriter scrolling (the caret line stays put; persists)
c / s	Comment / suggest a change on the selection (reading view)
a / x	Accept / reject the suggestion under the caret
go	Open another file — fuzzy history + per-segment path completion
↵	Follow the link under the caret — .md opens in place, web in the browser, #heading jumps (reading view)
gb / ⌫	Back to the document the last link was followed from (reading view)
gl	Links overview — jump-list of every link (reading view)
/	Fuzzy in-document search (n/N next/previous hit; ⇥ to replace)
F1	Full help

Embed

from textli import ZenMarkdownEditor, InlineVimEditor

ZenMarkdownEditor is the full-window editor (parent it into any widget); InlineVimEditor is a small vim-capable QPlainTextEdit for editing a single piece of text in place. See the embedding guide.

Develop

uv venv && uv pip install -e '.[dev]'
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen .venv/bin/pytest -q

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Bundled fonts — JetBrains Mono, Caveat and Literata — are licensed under the SIL Open Font License (JetBrains Mono, Caveat, Literata).