maya-nvim: my editor, with room for yours

Repository: unkindypie/maya-nvim 

I wanted a Neovim setup that felt familiar when I opened it. File search, an explorer, language tools, formatting, Git diffs. The ordinary things, without having to remember which bit of my config made them work.

That’s maya-nvim . I launch it with mvim. It’s inspired by LunarVim, but it’s a standalone setup with its own launcher and config directory. My other Neovim configs can stay where they are.

the core and the personal bits

The main checkout lives in ~/maya-nvim/. The small init.lua loads the modules in order; most of the actual setup lives under lua/maya/.

My personal settings go in ~/.config/mvim/init.lua. This matters more than it sounds. I want to update the core without digging my theme choice and local keybindings out of a merge conflict.

A small personal config can look like this:

return {
  theme = "savq/melange-nvim",
  transparent_background = true,
  reopen_tabs = true,
}

The bundled default is Catppuccin Frappé. I use Melange. There are also options, plugins, and setup fields for personal changes. Plugin specs merge after the built-in ones, so an override doesn’t need a copy of the whole setup.

My real config adds the desktop Light/Dark watcher too. I’ve put that part on the dotfiles page.

one inventory for language tools

lua/maya/languages.lua holds the language inventory. It describes the servers, packages, and parsers for each filetype. The installer and the editor’s first-use setup share that inventory.

For TypeScript, that means the TypeScript language server, ESLint, Prettier, and the right parser. Python uses Ruff and ty. Lua uses lua-language-server and StyLua.

Formatting goes through conform.nvim. For this blog, Prettier runs both in the terminal and on save. I like those two paths agreeing. There isn’t much joy in saving a file and getting a different result from CI.

small things I use all the time

Space opens the key hints. Space f finds files, Space e opens the explorer, and Space st searches text. H and L move between buffers.

Folder sessions restore files, tabs, and splits when enabled. There are image and diagram previews too: PlantUML gets a preview pane, and SVG can keep its source beside a live view.

And yes, there’s a Pokémon greeting on the dashboard. That one is less about productivity.

sharing files with an external editor

Sometimes another tool changes a file while I have it open. I don’t want a reload to throw away something I haven’t saved.

The reload module uses Neovim’s checktime, rather than forcing the buffer to match disk. Modified buffers keep Neovim’s conflict handling. :MayaDiffDisk opens a read-only snapshot of the disk file beside the current buffer when I need to compare them.

There’s also an optional Codex editor-context bridge. It’s a community compatibility implementation, and the repo documents the CLI versions it was tested against. I keep it opt-in because that private protocol can change.

trying it

The README  has the bootstrap command, supported platforms, and installer options. The setup targets Linux and macOS, and the installer can ask about local AI separately.

If you already have the checkout, ./install.sh runs the setup. Personal settings stay in their own directory. Space Mu updates the config and plugins; Space MU shows the last result.

It’s still my daily config, which means it will keep changing. I’m trying to make those changes easier to understand, not turn it into a museum piece.

Next: how the dotfiles connect the desktop colors, or what the local AI gets for context.