Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

Hi HN, we’re building Haystack Editor (https://haystackeditor.com/), a canvas-based IDE that automates the boring stuff (plumbing, refactoring, and finding code) so that you can focus on the exciting parts of software development! You can see a quick overview of Haystack at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2uZnR5D_cc!

(It's currently only on Mac OS but we're working on Linux and Windows. Edit: just added a Linux download!)

Haystack was born out of our frustrations with working in large and mature codebases, specifically with navigating and editing functional flows (e.g. the code flow for adding an item to the Amazon shopping cart).

Oftentimes dealing with such flows would involve navigating a maze of files and functions, and making any edits would involve a lengthy process of doing corresponding downstream/upstream plumbing.

Haystack attempts to address this in the following ways:

    1. It allows you to explore your codebase as a directed graph of functions, classes, etc on the canvas. We feel like this better fits how your mind understands your codebase and helps you find and alter functional flows more intuitively. We especially want to utilize this for pull request reviews!

    2. It has a navigational copilot that makes edits across files or functions much easier. After you make some changes, Haystack will try to predict your next action and create functions/methods or refactor upstream/downstream code for you. Haystack will surface these speculative edits on the canvas in a way that you can easily dismiss or incorporate them, allowing you to make large changes with a few clicks or keystrokes.

    3. Haystack will utilize natural language search so you don’t have to play “Where’s Waldo” to find a functional flow in your codebase. This is coming soon!

We’re still pretty early in development and we really want to perfect the experience of navigating and editing code on a canvas. Any feedback would be much appreciated!

PSA: Since Haystack is a VS Code fork, you should be able to move your extensions and keyboard shortcuts. Please let us know if you have any issues with this!

Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas
haystackeditor.com

Very cool concept! Will it be possible to make "boxes" with labels/titles so different frames can be grouped? And will zooming of the canvas be supported?

Ooh grouping is a cool idea we didn't consider! Curious to hear what you want out of grouping -- I can imagine it's useful to label functionalities and move different editors at once, but would love to hear from you.

You can zoom in/out of the canvas with CMD/CTRL + scrolling! I do think this can cause blurry text, which we definitely aim to fix

Oh nooooo, this is MacOS only? This is amazing and I need this so badly.

So it’s a more fancy/cpu intensive neovim without the learning curve?

I don’t know, looks cool. But seems like it would get annoying after a period of time. Too much dependency on a mouse for me.