Reef

AI 时代的最小开发者终端 The minimal dev terminal for the AI coding era

Once AI writes your code, 90% of an IDE becomes dead weight. Reef is the other 10%.

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Why

When AI writes most of your code, an IDE's surface shrinks to a handful of things: browsing files, reading files, searching, walking git diffs, and shipping the result. Reef is a terminal workbench for exactly that — and nothing else.

No autocomplete. No linter. No language server. Not even a text editor. Write with your AI tool of choice; come here to read, review, and ship — on your laptop or across an SSH connection.

What's in the box

Four tabs

• Files — tree navigator with a read-only preview: syntax-highlighted code, inline image rendering (Kitty / iTerm2 / halfblocks, auto-detected), and friendly metadata cards for binaries.
• Search — workdir-wide content search (ripgrep-powered, honours .gitignore) with live preview on the right; modal list / input modes, whole-row horizontal scroll, 1000-hit cap.
• Git — status with per-file +N −M numstat; stage / unstage per file or per folder (keyboard or double-click); unified or side-by-side diff; compact or full-file context; syntax-highlighted; discard (confirmed) and discard-all; push / force-push (--force-with-lease) behind a confirm banner.
• Graph — commit DAG with ref chips, inline commit detail and per-file diff. Vim-style visual mode (V) selects a range of commits and renders the merged diff across them; Shift+↑/↓ or Shift+Click extends the range without entering visual mode.

Palettes & overlays

• Space P — fuzzy quick-open by path.
• Space F — global content search overlay (shares the Search tab's backend; Alt+Enter pins the query into the tab).
• Ctrl+O — hosts picker: SSH hosts parsed from ~/.ssh/config plus recently-used entries; swaps the backend live without restarting.
• h — help.

Remote over SSH

Connect to a remote box and get the full Files / Search / Git / Graph UI — same keys, same feature set — driven through a tiny reef-agent daemon over SSH stdio.

reef --ssh user@host            # open remote $HOME (agent auto-installed)
reef --ssh user@host:/path      # open /path on host

• Auto-deploy: Reef detects the remote OS/arch and installs a version-matched reef-agent — downloaded from GitHub Releases, or uploaded from your local build as a fallback.
• One ControlMaster SSH session powers the whole thing: JSON-RPC over stdio for data, scp over the existing socket for drag-drop upload, ssh -t for $EDITOR.
• Content search, diff, graph, stage/unstage, file-tree create/rename/delete — all work identically remote.

File operations

• Create, rename, move-to-trash, and hard-delete from the file tree — via toolbar, right-click context menu, or keyboard (F2, d / Del, Shift+D / Shift+Del).
• Drag files from Finder / Explorer onto the terminal to enter place mode — click any directory to copy the dropped files there, Esc or right-click to cancel. Works over SSH (uploads via the existing ControlMaster).

Ergonomics

• Keyboard first, mouse where it earns its keep — drag to resize the split, double-click to toggle staging, scroll the panel under the cursor, right-click the tree for a context menu.
• Vim-style in-panel search — / and ? open a prompt, n / N step matches, with Alt/Ctrl word-editing shortcuts in the prompt.
• Navigation: ↑ / ↓, j / k, and Ctrl+P / Ctrl+N / Ctrl+K / Ctrl+J all move the selection on every tab.
• Selection & clipboard — v toggles mouse capture so the terminal's native text selection works; or drag inside a preview pane and Reef copies to the system clipboard via OSC 52 (no helper binary, works over SSH).
• Auto-themes — OSC 11 probe picks up terminal light/dark mode; locale auto-detects (English / 简体中文).
• Persistent prefs — diff layout, diff mode, recent SSH hosts, and friends survive restarts.

Install

Via npm (recommended)

# Run without installing
npx @reef-tui/cli

# Or install globally
npm install -g @reef-tui/cli
reef

The correct native binary for your platform is selected automatically. Supported: macOS (arm64, x64), Linux (arm64, x64), Windows (x64).

Build from source

cargo build --release

# Run from inside any git repo:
cd your-git-repo
/path/to/reef/target/release/reef

Reef works anywhere. Outside a git repo, the Git and Graph tabs show a "Not a git repository" placeholder; the Files tab still browses the current directory. If you start Reef in a non-repo with no recent hosts, the hosts picker opens so you always have a visible path forward.

Keybindings

Global

Key	Action
q, Ctrl+C	quit
1 / 2 / 3 / 4	Files / Search / Git / Graph tab
Tab	cycle tabs
Shift+Tab	switch focused panel
h	help
Space p	quick-open file (fuzzy path)
Space f	global content search overlay
Ctrl+O	hosts picker (open SSH target)
v	toggle mouse capture (for terminal text selection)
↑ / ↓, j / k, Ctrl+P / Ctrl+N	navigate
Ctrl+K / Ctrl+J	navigate (alt)
PgUp / PgDn	page
← / →, Shift+← / Shift+→	horizontal scroll
Home / End	reset / jump h-scroll
/ · ? · n / N	vim-style find in preview / diff
drag file into terminal	enter place mode

Files tab

Key	Action
Enter	expand/collapse directory, or open file in $EDITOR
e	open selected file in $EDITOR
r	rebuild tree
F2	rename selected entry
d / Del / ⌫	move selected entry to trash (confirm)
Shift+D / Shift+Del	hard-delete (confirm)
right-click	open file-tree context menu

Search tab

Left panel is modal. List mode is the default: global shortcuts (h, q, digit keys, …) stay live; press / or i to focus the input, Esc to return. Typing updates results live.

Key	Action
/ or i	focus the search input
Esc	return to list mode
Enter, double-click	reveal match in Files tab (matched line highlighted)
r	reload current query
Alt+← / Alt+→, Ctrl+W / Ctrl+U	word-edit the prompt

Git tab

Key	Action
s / u	stage / unstage (file, or every file under a folder row)
d → y	discard unstaged file / folder (confirm)
Enter / e	open selected file in $EDITOR
r	refresh
t	tree / flat view
m	unified ↔ side-by-side diff layout
f	compact ↔ full-file diff

Graph tab

Key	Action
↑ / ↓, j / k	move commit selection
V	enter visual mode (select commit range)
↑ / ↓ or PgUp / PgDn (visual)	extend range
Shift+↑ / Shift+↓, Shift+Click	extend range without visual mode
click in range (visual)	set the other end
Esc	exit visual mode / clear range
m / f	commit-file diff layout / mode
t	tree / flat changed files

Status

Alpha. Single-process Rust binary — no plugins, no IPC on the local path. Files, Git, and Graph are host-native; remote uses a thin reef-agent daemon over SSH stdio. One codebase, one UI, one key map — local and remote are feature-parity.