Intent-Driven Text Transformation for the Terminal

A terminal-native tool for transforming text by declaring intent, previewing effects, and committing change deliberately.

Text tools have grown in complexity, speed, and extensibility, yet their core interaction model has remained largely unchanged for decades. Whether you are using Vim, Emacs, sed, awk, or less, you are still fundamentally moving through text, applying operations immediately, and relying on experience and undo to recover when things go wrong.

This model works exceptionally well for writing and small, local edits. It becomes increasingly fragile as the scope of change grows.

xf exists to address that gap.

xf is a terminal-native text transformation tool designed for moments when text editing becomes a reasoning problem rather than a typing problem. It replaces cursor motion with explicit selection, immediate mutation with transactional change, and implicit intent with deliberate, inspectable operations.

The Problem with Powerful Editors

Experienced users value Vim and Emacs because they reward mastery. Speed, precision, and composability are the payoff for learning their models deeply. However, that power comes with a cost: intent is encoded indirectly.

A refactor is not written down; it is performed. A migration is not described; it is enacted. When something goes wrong, the only artifacts left behind are the final state of the file and a vague memory of how you got there.

Tools like sed and awk offer a different kind of power. They are explicit, repeatable, and scriptable, but they assume that the transformation can be described as a linear pass over text. As soon as conditions multiply, structure matters, or human judgment is required, they either collapse into unreadable one-liners or are abandoned entirely.

less allows inspection and exploration, but it is intentionally passive. It cannot participate in change.

xf starts from the observation that none of these tools are wrong. They are simply optimized for different moments in the lifecycle of text.

Traditional editors versus xf workflow

What xf Changes

xf is built around the idea that large or risky changes should be described before they are applied.

There is no cursor in xf, because cursor position is irrelevant to intent. There is no insert mode, because xf is not designed for free-form typing. Instead, the core unit of interaction is a selection: a set of text regions defined by meaning rather than location.

Users describe what text they intend to operate on, refine that description to exclude edge cases, propose a transformation, and inspect the outcome as a diff. Only then is the change committed.

This shifts the user’s attention away from navigation and toward understanding.

Editing as a Deliberate Process

In traditional editors, changes happen immediately. Undo exists to reverse mistakes after the fact. This model assumes that experimentation and recovery are cheaper than caution.

xf inverts this assumption.

In xf, changes are proposals. Every transformation is previewed. The primary output of the tool is not modified text, but a description of change. History is not a stream of keystrokes, but a readable, replayable record of decisions.

This makes xf particularly effective in situations where the cost of an error is high: large refactors, configuration migrations, data cleanup, or working in unfamiliar codebases.

Complementing Existing Tools

xf is not intended to replace existing editors or text tools. It is designed to fit alongside them.

Vim and Emacs remain the best tools for writing text and performing fine-grained, interactive edits. sed and awk remain unmatched for simple, linear transformations. less remains ideal for inspection and exploration.

xf occupies the space between these tools. It is for transformations that are too complex to trust to a one-pass filter and too risky to perform blindly in an interactive editor.

A typical workflow might involve writing code in Vim, inspecting output with less, performing a large refactor in xf, and returning to Vim for local cleanup. xf does not compete for ownership of the editing session; it intervenes only when the nature of the problem changes.

Making Intent Visible

One of the most significant advantages of xf is that intent becomes a first-class artifact.

Selections are named and inspectable. Refinements are explicit. Transformations are expressed as commands that can be read, reviewed, and replayed. This makes editing sessions teachable and auditable in a way traditional editor sessions are not.

When a change goes wrong in xf, the reason is visible. You can see exactly what was selected, why it was selected, and how it was transformed. This dramatically reduces the cognitive load associated with large-scale change.

Terminal-Native by Design

xf is designed to feel at home in a Unix environment. It operates in the terminal, reads from files or standard input, and produces deterministic output. Its history and configuration are plain text. Its behavior is predictable and scriptable.

This alignment with Unix philosophy is deliberate. xf borrows the composability and transparency of classic tools while extending them to handle transformations that require preview, branching logic, and human judgment.

Not Faster, but Safer

xf does not aim to be the fastest way to change a single line of text. It aims to be the safest way to change many lines of text.

By slowing down the moment of commitment and speeding up understanding, xf reduces errors, anxiety, and the need for manual verification. It encourages users to think in terms of sets, structure, and meaning rather than positions and keystrokes.

Who xf Is For

xf is designed for experienced terminal users who routinely work with large or complex bodies of text. It assumes familiarity with existing tools and builds on that foundation rather than replacing it.

It is intentionally opinionated and narrow in scope. xf will not appeal to everyone, and it does not try to.

A Different Kind of Text Tool

xf treats text transformation as a careful, deliberate act. It acknowledges that some changes are too important to be improvised and too complex to be trusted to opaque mechanisms.

When the problem stops being “where do I type” and becomes “what should change,” xf provides a model that makes reasoning visible and mistakes rare.

If Vim feels like an instrument and sed feels like a blade, xf is a workbench: a place to lay things out, inspect them carefully, and change them with intent.

Get Involved

xf is early, evolving, and guided by a clear philosophy rather than feature parity. Its value lies not in novelty, but in the problems it chooses to address directly.

If you believe that powerful text tools should make intent explicit, changes deliberate, and outcomes understandable, xf may earn a place in your terminal workflow.