The Neovim Book
From First Principles to a Reproducible Professional Workstation.
Coming soon
Neovim is a small runtime that you can inspect and program. The book starts with a clean nvim process and explains native editing, Lua configuration, the API, events, Tree-sitter, and the built-in LSP client before adding plugins. Each plugin fills a specific gap, with its responsibilities and fallback documented. LazyVim comes last, once its parts are familiar.
Status: the first-edition manuscript is content complete (31 chapters, 5 appendices, about 95,000 words). The local PDF and EPUB have passed their release checks; external publication is not configured yet.
First edition ships DRM-free as PDF and EPUB, with free updates.
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The book begins with native editing and Lua, then adds language tooling and plugins when a concrete need appears. It closes by unpacking LazyVim and covering performance, security, troubleshooting, and reproducible setups. Open a part to see its chapters.
What this book assumes, and how to read it
Part 1 Lineage and Foundations 3 chapters
- 1 From vi to Neovim
- 2 Neovim and Vim
- 3 The Editor as a State Machine
Part 2 Native Editing Craft 6 chapters
- 4 A Clean-room Configuration
- 5 Options, Mappings, Commands, and Autocommands
- 6 Editing as a Composable Language
- 7 Registers, Macros, and Repeatable Work
- 8 Buffers, Windows, Tab Pages, and Lists
- 9 Files, Projects, Sessions, and Native Navigation
Part 3 Lua and the Neovim Runtime 5 chapters
- 10 Lua Configuration as Software
- 11 The API Object Model
- 12 Events, Scheduling, Jobs, and Channels
- 13 Terminal, Headless, Remote, and UI Clients
- 14 Authoring and Testing a Small Plugin
Part 4 Language Tooling Without an IDE Shell 4 chapters
- 15 Trees and Syntax
- 16 The Built-in LSP Client
- 17 Diagnostics, Completion, Snippets, Formatting, and Linting
- 18 Project Toolchains
Part 5 Plugins by Demonstrated Need 7 chapters
- 19 The Plugin System from First Principles
- 20 Dependencies and lazy.nvim
- 21 Interface and Feedback Plugins
- 22 Navigation, Search, Git, and Editing Plugins
- 23 Language-intelligence Plugins
- 24 Domain Workflows
- 25 AI-assisted Editing
Part 6 Turn-key Frameworks 2 chapters
- 26 LazyVim Anatomy
- 27 Operating and Customizing LazyVim
Part 7 Production Practice 4 chapters
- 28 Performance and Startup Engineering
- 29 Security, Trust, and Reproducibility
- 30 Troubleshooting and Recovery
- 31 Capstone: A Minimal Professional Workstation
Part 8 Appendices 5 appendices
- A Migrating Vim Configuration
- B Command, API, Event, and Runtime-path Atlas
- C Pinned Plugin Catalog
- D Sources, Reproducibility, and Verification
- E Glossary and Generated Subject Index
For professionals who already know editing basics.
You can enter and leave Insert mode, move, search, save, and survive :help. The book assumes no Lua expertise, no plugin-manager familiarity, and no knowledge of Neovim internals.
- IT professionals who use one editor across many languages and repositories.
- Engineers who want language tooling without an IDE shell: Tree-sitter, the built-in LSP client, diagnostics, and formatting.
- Operators who need a configuration that another person can reproduce and repair.
Coming soon.
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