I know CherryTree, hirarquical rich text notes and also programming editor (FOSS, GNU GPL), existed long before AI https://github.com/giuspen/cherrytree
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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If you like/don't mind working in the terminal, Neovim can do basically anything, it's hyper-modular. But the learning curve is very steep. The people who use it are absolutely devoted, and it's an incredible peice of software, but it's not made with the beginner in mind.
If you want a traditional GUI app, Kate from the KDE team is a really nice, reasonably lightweight IDE. Kate IDE
It's like a simplified VSCodium. It has all the basic IDE features, LSP and syntax highlighting for 400+ programming languages, tabs/panes/window support, code breakpoints, Git integration, built-in terminal execution, and community plugins for various other features.
The one thing Kate doesn't have for your use case, is a built-in live HTML preview. Technically, Kate actually supports a simple HTML live preview if you enable it, but only in the Linux version, and from what I read online, other than very basic HTML stuff, it's not very good. There may be a community plugin that somebody built, but you would need to research that yourself.
You can disable AI in Zed
VSCode and Pycharm do it all for me. You can turn all that shit off.
I think I might move to VSCodium, hail libre!
If you're willing to go into the terminal based editor rabbit hole, I recommend going straight to helix, coming from vim/neovim in the past it's much easier to get into and maintain since it's batteries included and doesn't take huge dotfiles to configure it like you want, and the movement feels more intuitive to me than vim's
Neovim so many plugins and customization you can look st chadvim or lazyvim plugins for it
Vscodium
Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VS Code. VSCodium is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code.
I second this!
I don't know about VSCodium specifically since I use VSCode, but it does allow you to disable all AI features. Don't know about telemetry.
I use VSCodium. I happen to like it pretty well, since it supports a niche language I use to mod games. I really like that it disables so many annoying features that Microsoft seems to think essential. But I wouldn't be opposed to switching to a new IDE if it seems more workable.
Emacs!!!
Should work with embedded webkit widgets for the preview.
Neovim. No other editor comes close to it.
I also second this!
Looks like sublime text. How does it differ?
The mission page for gram, as someone unfamiliar with it until this thread, is genuinely a thing of beauty.
Thank you! Noted!
Not sure about preview, but Kate?
Kate's dope for everything, small notes, code.
Kate rules.
I'm always surprised by its sheer power
I got markdown previews somehow so it can probably do HTML too!
It does have preview, the plugin has to be enabled/may need some libraries installed.
Have you tried disabling the AI in Zed? There's a toggle in the settings to disable all AI features. I've disabled the AI and it's actually a really nice, responsive, clean editor. Just one toggle, and it doesn't re-enable itself. The whole "AI-native" marketing really put me off trying it, but it's now become my go-to IDE for when I'm working on a project where I want a more fully-featured IDE than Vim (my go-to for just editing text files eg standalone scripts, small projects).
If you don't want to do that, or if you try it and still don't like Zed, maybe Kate?
You can easily disable all AI features in Zed.
I was going to mention the same. Zed has a single global "Disable AI" option which works well.
not enough. we need ZERO a.i trash. Why need to waste developing energy in develop a.i shit? no need. i repeat: we need ZERO A.I trash in a text editor
Gram, an AI free Zed fork, fits this perfectly.
As an other commenter mentioned, you can read their mission statement here: https://gram-editor.com/docs/mission/
Geany is quite a nice, simple editor. Very lightweight, open-source, and no AI.
The line break system is weird and should be opt-in, not opt-out, but yes, otherwise, Geany is great! I've otherwise simply been using Xed on Linux Mint.
vim
I'd like to say neovim but if notepad++ is too complicated then neovim definately is. There are 'distributions' that give you a setup ready to go e.g. Lazyvim but you're still going to have to fiddle with it sometimes.
I don't think Lazyvim has any ai features out of the box.
If you are at all curious the 'Lazyvim for Ambitious Developers' book is a great way in and easy to skim through. Here's the chapter on ai which proves you have to turn it on to enable it:
https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/course/chapter-16/
I can't say for sure if the developers of neovim are using ai themselves for the codebase, I suspect they might be as they have made positive statements on it in the past. Love to hear if someone can confirm or not.
Not sure about live HTML preview, but I ended up picking Gram as well, on my search for AI-free software. (By the way, I found open-slopware a good resource for this.) Someone else already mentioned it in this thread, but I wanted to add some context. Gram is a fork of Zed, which is built for and with AI. It is therefore already tainted, if that's something you care about. However, I found the Manifesto neat. (It also has official support for Zig which is what I was looking for specifically at the time.)
Oh and I was also recommended Kate. I haven't gotten to try it, but it could be an alternative worth considering.
!emacs@lemmy.ml !emacs@programming.dev
I've been using it for many, many years. C++, Bash, Python, LaTeX, Rust...
The setup and learning can take a bit but once you figure it out, you can move your config file across machines. You can define your own functions, define shortcuts per mode you're in and lots more. Works both in GUI and CL
nvi
Which operating system are you on? (Sometimes it's relevant, and you mention notepad++.)
On Linux, I like kate, but IDK if it has live html preview. I use it for Rust and general editing, not for web development admittedly.
I believe it does have HTML preview when using the document preview plugin and with kparts packages installed. When ive used the preview tool i think you can have a split screen view with one half the file and the other the preview, but ive not tested it with html.
I like Kate myself, its a good editor with support for numerous languages, and a decent session system and a range of plugins.
Built-in live preview for HTML
Only in electron based editors AFAIK. It requires an integrated browser engine, and electron already is an integrated browser engine so that makes it easy.
What do you need/use that you find in modern editors that you can't get in something like Emacs? While there are AI integrations for Emacs they are all optional.
Helix and Gram. Try em out. Gram even has a Helix bindings mode.
n--?
+1 for pulsar