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Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

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Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#41

Post by benreesman »

paddy_m wrote: post #36
cml123 wrote: post #32

Lately I've been seeing a lot of derision from the Emacs community of the consideration for integrating these kinds of tools with Emacs, but I truly think that's much more hurtful than helpful. Although the current development and usage of AI in software development may not closely resemble the techniques used at the time, it seems to me that Emacs' history is inextricably linked to the MIT AI Lab. It feels weird the…

This is due to Richard Stalllman. He thinks that integrating "non-free" alternatives when free alternatives don't yet exist slows down free software development. Not just free as in freedom alternatives, not just free as in GPL licensed, but free as in FSF controlled projects. He did the same thing with linking extensions to GCC, LLVM debugger integration into emacs (fuzzy on that one), possibly treesitter into emacs…

A lot of us are grateful in some abstract way for all the foundational work RMS did both technically and organizationally to preserve what remaining software freedoms we still have, but got off the bus a long time ago. He got really weird and it was on some "no fly zone" shit.

There's an `emacs` community that recognizes the history without being involved in any contemporary sense.

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#42

Post by [deleted] »

blahgeek wrote: post #9

Like LSP and tree-sitter, I think AI coding tools like Claude Code or Aider are very good news for niche editors like Emacs or Vim. Instead of struggling about implementing advanced IDE-like features, they can integrate with these tools relatively easily, and focus on other editing related features that set them apart. In fact, IMO it makes these editors more competitive because they are highly customizable and easie…

[deleted]

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#43

Post by cmrdporcupine »

neutronicus wrote: post #10

I've tried out a similar project (claude-code.el). I use Spacemacs in evil-mode and I found it very frustrating to try and type into the Claude Code text box (often my cursor would be somewhere weird, the terminal emulator just really did not seem to "understand" that I was not in Insert Mode). I wound up deciding that I'd rather just use Claude Code in the terminal. The Claude Code text box is ALSO annoying there, s…

I tried it and it has similar problems. Claude Code is not a good "citizen" embedded elsewhere as it wants to control the terminal completely.

I use default emacs keybindings, which are a bit friendlier with this since they're similar to the bash/readline keybindings it uses... but it's still jarring.

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#44

Post by skydhash »

paddy_m wrote: post #36
cml123 wrote: post #32

Lately I've been seeing a lot of derision from the Emacs community of the consideration for integrating these kinds of tools with Emacs, but I truly think that's much more hurtful than helpful. Although the current development and usage of AI in software development may not closely resemble the techniques used at the time, it seems to me that Emacs' history is inextricably linked to the MIT AI Lab. It feels weird the…

This is due to Richard Stalllman. He thinks that integrating "non-free" alternatives when free alternatives don't yet exist slows down free software development. Not just free as in freedom alternatives, not just free as in GPL licensed, but free as in FSF controlled projects. He did the same thing with linking extensions to GCC, LLVM debugger integration into emacs (fuzzy on that one), possibly treesitter into emacs…

Where would they integrate it. Emacs is a small core of C code. Almost everything is Elisp and in the same standing as third party packages. I’m not seeing what being in emacs core brings to an AI package?

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#45

Post by dismalaf »

blahgeek wrote: post #9

Like LSP and tree-sitter, I think AI coding tools like Claude Code or Aider are very good news for niche editors like Emacs or Vim. Instead of struggling about implementing advanced IDE-like features, they can integrate with these tools relatively easily, and focus on other editing related features that set them apart. In fact, IMO it makes these editors more competitive because they are highly customizable and easie…

It's always been that way. Emacs has had advanced IDE-like features for as long as I can remember. Vim too.

LSP and TS just make it easier to standardize across editors and languages.

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#46

Post by uludag »

cml123 wrote: post #32

Lately I've been seeing a lot of derision from the Emacs community of the consideration for integrating these kinds of tools with Emacs, but I truly think that's much more hurtful than helpful. Although the current development and usage of AI in software development may not closely resemble the techniques used at the time, it seems to me that Emacs' history is inextricably linked to the MIT AI Lab. It feels weird the…

The beauty of Emacs though is that it puts the user in full control. There is nothing in the world stopping anyone from modifying anything in Emacs (at least on the Elisp layer), hence packages like this.

VS Code on the other hand is designed to fracture [1]. MS can and has given proprietary API access to their blessed tools, forcing others to go through their much less capable extension API, hence the plethora of vscode forks. Even if you had the most motivated, excited group of people wanting to work on the latest and greatest LLM interactions with VS code, they would most likely be forced to fork. On the other hand, it just takes one motivated Elisp dev to implement whatever they want and make any external package they want integrate with it.

Also, I think the derision from the Emacs community may be a bit overblown. I'm constantly seeing AI/LLM related plugins appearing for Emacs and they tend to get decent traction (e.g. https://github.com/karthink/gptel).

[1] https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#47

Post by mijoharas »

vemv wrote: post #8

I'm happily using https://github.com/stevemolitor/claude-code.el which is a mere terminal wrapper (including a nifty Transient menu). But just by virtue of running inside Emacs you get a lot of power - it didn't take me a lot of effort to create an efficient, customized workflow that felt much more streamlined than my older iTerm usage. I'll keep an eye on this new offering though. There's also https://github.com/edi…

I tried that for a bit, and bounced back to just using claude code in a terminal. It was a little bit janky in emacs, and didn't have any features that justified not just running a separate terminal window (for me, at the time I checked it out).

I'm wondering if this project will work. It does feel a shame that it doesn't work with the existing mcp.el package[0], but I never got around to setting that up anyways. I wonder if it's a limitation of the package? or not wanting another dependency?

(in addition I've only really played around with claude code a little because I haven't gotten it to a place where I can make it write code I'd consider acceptable for my day job.)

[0] https://github.com/lizqwerscott/mcp.el

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#48

Post by bowsamic »

cml123 wrote: post #32

Lately I've been seeing a lot of derision from the Emacs community of the consideration for integrating these kinds of tools with Emacs, but I truly think that's much more hurtful than helpful. Although the current development and usage of AI in software development may not closely resemble the techniques used at the time, it seems to me that Emacs' history is inextricably linked to the MIT AI Lab. It feels weird the…

I didn’t know MIT AI lab was involved in the modern AI boom, that’s interesting

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#50

Post by ljm »

benreesman wrote: post #24
mikece wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a standard for integrating agentic coding tools into an editor similar to how an LSP allows the integration of language-specific features?

Its not at anything like the adoption of MCP or especially LSP, and it takes a more "foundational and composable library of primitives" approach than "wire protocol per se" approach, but `gptel` has quite the vibrant little ecosystem around it and its just god mode, wall hacks on the VSCode stuff, just blows it away. I'm under extreme time pressure at the moment, I cannot afford to fuck around on ideology right now I…

My 'beef' with Cursor is that the editor is part of the package and you don't really have the same kind of hooks into the agent that you do with Claude Code or similar, which really means you're at the mercy of the Cursor team to prioritise those things on their roadmap. That includes things like the limit of 40 MCP tools that you can only enable globally (and MCP proxies that try to do this dynamically are a bit flakey) - even just using the GitHub MCP blows through that limit because it's all or nothing.

It's good for what it is but I don't love that I have to change to a whole-ass new editor to get access to the agentic additions, when alternatives that require an API key or a more flexible CLI tool can do a better job.

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