Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to RTE – Bret Victor’s interfaces, the Unix way

RTE: Bret Victor’s interfaces, the UNIX way. Contribute to edouardklein/realtimeedit development by creating an account on GitHub.

RTE is a development tool that applies Bret Victor's interface design principles using Unix philosophy. Hosted on GitHub, it enables real-time editing and interaction for developers. The project is open source and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. RTE – Bret Victor’s interfaces, the Unix way launched in 2013; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1
   C1 by Thesys▲629

   Make AI apps respond with interactive UI in real-time

   2025 · thesys.dev · its alternatives →

2. 2
   An open-source, collaborative, WYSIWYG Markdown editor▲460

   Inspired by the design and UI/UX of apps like Notion, and utility of open-source apps like StackEdit, I decided to create a minimalistic, local-only WYSIWYG Markdown editor. Some features worth highlighting: - Monaco editor and Prettier integration for code snippets - Tables (apparently the holy grail of WYSIWYG editing) - Embeds (for CodePen, CodeSandbox and YouTube, most useful for HTML or JSON exports) - Accepts Markdown paste-in, and "exports"/generates HTML, Markdown and JSON outputs - Collaboration (with real-time awareness and initial commenting system, available only when…

   2023 · editor.vrite.io · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop▲291

   Slint is a declarative GUI toolkit written primarily in Rust, with API support for multiple programming languages such as C++ and JavaScript. It is designed for desktop and embedded usage. The Slint website has just been redesigned. And we added a new Royalty-Free License option besides GPL and commercial

   2023 · slint.dev · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Iota – a text editor written in Rust▲221

   A terminal-based text editor written in Rust. Contribute to gchp/iota development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/Notion▲381

   Hi HN, Nick here. We’re launching OpenKnowledge (https://openknowledge.ai/), a “what you see is what you get” markdown editor that has direct integrations with Claude, Codex, and other agents. Available as MacOS app or Web UI+CLI. Fully free/local and OSS. We built this because we wanted a Notion-like experience for writing and sharing markdown files across our team. Obsidian is the best alternative we tried, but found it doesn’t have a true WYSWIG UI and it didn’t integrate well with Claude/Codex outside of community plugins. So we built OpenKnowledge. It takes…

   Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6EI
   Edtr.io – Intuitive web editor, open source and fully adaptable▲234

   2020 · edtr.io · its alternatives →

7. 7FA
   Fresh – A new terminal editor built in Rust▲187

   I built Fresh to challenge the status quo that terminal editing must require a steep learning curve or endless configuration. My goal was to create a fast, resource-efficient TUI editor with the usability and features of a modern GUI editor (like a command palette, mouse support, and LSP integration). Core Philosophy: - Ease-of-Use: Fundamentally non-modal. Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve. - Efficiency: Uses a lazy-loading piece tree to avoid loading huge files into RAM - reads only what's needed for user interactions. Coded in Rust. - Extensibility: Uses…

   Dec 2025 · sinelaw.github.io · its alternatives →

8. 8
   Neptune by Hashnode▲250

   Our Markdown-based WYSIWYG editor for composing blog posts

   2022 · hashnode.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   hackernews_tui – A Terminal UI to browse Hacker News discussions▲160

   A Terminal UI to browse Hacker News. Contribute to aome510/hackernews-TUI development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Devsync▲319

    Visually edit CSS. Live-sync the result with your editor.

    2020 · devsync.co · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Fully Open-Sourced Online MIDI Editor▲93

    Fully Open-sourced Online MIDI Editor

    2020 · signal.vercel.app · its alternatives →

12. 12
    RatatuiRuby wraps Rust Ratatui as a RubyGem – TUIs with the joy of Ruby▲152

    Terminal user interfaces in Ruby. RatatuiRuby wraps Rust

    Jan 2026 · ratatui-ruby.dev · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Rustpad, a self-hosted online collaborative text editor▲143

    Efficient and minimal collaborative code editor, self-hosted, no database required - ekzhang/rustpad

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    HNTerm – Browse Hacker News in the Terminal▲139

    ImTui: Immediate Mode Text-based User Interface C++ Library - imtui/examples/hnterm at master · ggerganov/imtui

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Tome, aka Tom's Editor – a new command-line text editor▲131

    A command line text editor written in Node.js, focused on JavaScript. - tome/README.md at main · boutell/tome

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    Hntui – A TUI for Hacker News▲113

    sleeek tui for hacker news. Contribute to ahmd-sh/hntui development by creating an account on GitHub.

    26d ago · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    A retro terminal text editor for GNU/Linux coded in C (C-edit)▲168

    I set about coding my own version of the classic MS-DOS EDIT.COM for GNU/Linux systems four years ago and it this is where the project is at... still rough around the edges but works well with Termux! :) Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bneUX_kVA

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    Nimwave – build TUIs for the terminal, web, and desktop▲195

    TUIs for the terminal, desktop, and web. Contribute to ansiwave/nimwave development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

19. 19WM
    We made a real-time editor for web database apps▲121

    2018 · demo.hyperfiddle.net · its alternatives →

20. 20
    A flow based data processing editor▲188

    node-based editor for exploring, analyzing and transforming data without code

    2021 · datablocks.pro · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Async UI: A Rust UI Library Where Everything is a Future▲173

    2022 · wishawa.github.io · its alternatives →

22. 22
    Edtr.io▲133

    Intuitive WYSIWYG web editor, open source & fully adaptable.

    2020 · its alternatives →

23. 23TT
    type to me, old-school unix talk for the web▲43

    old-unix-style character at a time talk using websockets

    2011 · typeto.me · its alternatives →

24. 24
    ut – Rust based CLI utilities for devs and IT▲170

    Hey HN, I find myself reaching for tools like it-tools.tech or other random sites every now and then during development or debugging. So, I built a toolkit with a sane and simple CLI interface for most of those tools. For the curious and lazy, at the moment, ut has tools for, - Encoding: base64 (encode, decode), url (encode, decode) - Hashing: md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512 - Data Generation: uuid (v1, v3, v4, v5), token, lorem, random - Text Processing: case (lower, upper, camel, title, constant, header, sentence, snake), pretty-print, diff - Development Tools: calc, json…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →