Repackaging a Neovim distribution as a plugin

Most Neovim distributions ship as a repo you clone into ~/.config/nvim, which makes your config and their distribution the same git repository. Splitting them into a plugin plus a starter template fixes that — here’s why, and how.

August 19, 2026 · 13 min · Omar Crosby

Lua in Neovim, from the ground up

A comprehensive introduction to Lua as it lives inside Neovim — why the project bet on it, which Lua Neovim actually runs (LuaJIT, Lua 5.1 semantics with select extensions), the whole language walked in from smallest values to metatables and coroutines, the five gotchas, and the vim.* namespace that turns Lua into a text-editor scripting language.

August 16, 2026 · 34 min · Omar Crosby

Vim macros, from record-and-replay to reshaping thousands of lines

A Vim macro is a recorded sequence of keystrokes that you replay against a range, and it is the tool that beats sed, awk, and multi-cursor for irregular structural edits. This is the reference post: recording, replaying, applying over ranges, editing a macro as text in a register, recursive macros, and the specific patterns that make macros a daily tool. Fourth and final in the Vim series.

August 9, 2026 · 12 min · Omar Crosby

Vim registers, all ten kinds and when each one saves you

Vim has ten kinds of registers — unnamed, numbered, named, small-delete, read-only, expression, selection, black-hole, alternate-file, and last-search. Most Vim users know two of them and lose work to the other eight. This is the reference post: what each register is for, when it saves you, and the concrete recipes that turn registers from trivia into a daily tool. Third in a four-part Vim series.

August 9, 2026 · 14 min · Omar Crosby

Vim motions and text objects, the actual language

Motions and text objects are where Vim’s productivity actually lives. This post is a full reference — every motion category, every text object, the counts and repeats that combine with them, and worked examples showing why ‘change inside quotes’ is the command you’ll type ten times a day. Second in a four-post series on Vim, following the modal-editing intro and preceding the deep dives on registers and macros.

August 9, 2026 · 14 min · Omar Crosby