I never could have expected for last week to go the way it did. It was insane and I couldn't be any happier.
Let me introduce you to EVi if you haven't heard of it yet. (pronounced "ee-vee-eye", alternatively also "ee-vee".) EVi is hard-fork of the VIm text editor, aiming to undo the AI slop that was introduced into VIm's codebase. It is the work of myself, EVi contributors, EVi maintainers, Bram Molenaar who made VIm and the plenty of other VIm maintainers and contributors over the years.
Where does it all begin?
Sunday, March 8th 2026, morning time. I'm reading through my Mastodon feed and I see something that caught my eye. Christian Brabandt, the current lead maintainer of VIm, started using Claude Code for VIm's codebase and letting other LLM slop nonsense make it into VIm. Of course, as someone who doesn't like AI slopperys and loves VIm for how simple it is when you learn it, I wasn't very happy.
(Unrelated side note: I learned VIm because of Red Star OS 3. Yes, that North Korean Linux distribution. As far as I remember, that was no nano or anything in RS3 so my only choice was to look up how to use Vi and VIm.)
I wanted my own copy of VIm without AI slop in it, which led me to cloning to VIm on my Codeberg account. At first, it was v9.1.0 that I had cloned but I thought that was a bit early (being Jan 2nd 2024) and along with my contribution to the open-slopware repo on Codeberg to add VIm to the list with EVidence (see what I did there?), I would start tracking down the first AI commit and upgrade to the one before that. Turns out that wasn't a good idea later on.
I told a couple of peeps on Mastodon about my clone thinking I could make a project out of this and I made the first issue on how this should proceed and to start designating EVi as a hard-fork of VIm.
I wanted to originally name the project CVi (short for "Community's Vi Improved" or "Community's Vi") but it seems like an IDE took the name of CVi already. Instead, I took EVi. This name doesn't have a fixed meaning, other than Vi meaning... well, Vi. The E could mean anything! Soon after, I had started posting about EVi on Mastodon and honestly I didn't expect much. Maybe "oh cool, it's another hard-fork, yeah yeah yeah yadayada make something original please..." but nothing like what we actually got.
Eventually, I got some people involved. Like 2 or 3 and originally said they wouldn't focus on it too much, which honestly I get. It's a big ask to start helping with a project which at that point was only less than 6 hours old with a borderline extreme goal (at least to me). Carrying on VIm without the other maintainers/contributors and with trying to dodge AI? It's hard to do one-person.
Monday rolls around and I'm just sitting somewhere with my Apple Watch on. It's just past 9AM. Nothing's happening at the time. I couldn't have been prepared for the events of the next week out from there. My watch buzzes, I'm just assuming it's a text or an email or the usual (now not-so-)rare Mastodon notification.
(and as I type this, I am not kidding you, I just got a Mastodon mention on my Apple Watch and from who I consider a good friends of mine! Greetz to kkarhan and fellow EVi maintainer/contributor Reiddragon!)
I see it's a Mastodon favourite and boost from a user on my EVi post. I think to myself "ooh, very nice" and carry on with what I was doing. Then my watch goes off again. More favourites. Okay, nice.
Again.
Boosts.
Again.
Mentions.
Within about 45 minutes, my watch must have went off about 50-60+ times. I was just stunned, I don't know how my post had started popping off. Even to this day it still gets boosts and favourites. At the end of the day, I had gained around 34+ followers. Plenty of attention brought to EVi. The next day, even more, 30+ followers and more stars on EVi.
The day after, over 20+ followers more. Eventually, within a week of that Monday, I had 100+ followers added on, bringing me from somewhere on the 260's to 368, which I still find absolutely insane. People REALLY liked the EVi project. In fact, as of March 17th, we have almost 100 stars on Codeberg!
However, EVi didn't come without its problems. We learned that EVi still had potential AI slop in the codebase, dating back as far as March 2024 and only called out in November 2025 by a GitHub user who got their comment minimised as spam for posting about it. (Ever heard of the Streisand Effect... or the delete button, VIm maintainers?) So, an emergency issue was made by me discussing what we should do and over IRC too.
Around 6 hours later, our choice was to rebase our work on v9.1.0 from Jan 2024, the one I originally forked. It wasn't hard to do at all and it still worked, we even got to keep our changes too!
EVi has shown up in lots of places around the web. In fact, here's a list of places we've found ourselves on (even if they were critical of us):
"Vibe Coded" Podcast, Episode 10 "Slop-Free Software is So Hot Right Now"
(soon in April) The Starlight Network No AI list
open-slopware (as an alternative) (okay that one may have been my doing)
I'd like to end this blog post by thanking everyone. I thank everyone so much for their support of EVi and what we're doing. This all started as me not wanting AI in VIm and wanting my own little untampered fork to a full on project to make our own VIm hard-fork without AI for others too. This is my most popular project I've ever had. I would also like to thank the others who have helped EVi grow, especially our maintainers and contributors. Without you all as well, EVi would have stayed on the floor.
Thank you everyone and I hope to see you all at a later point. As always, you can reach me at @mrmasterkeyboard@mastodon.social on the Fediverse, NerdNextDoor#7262 on Fluxer, @nerdnextdoor:matrix.to on Matrix or #evi @ irc.oftc.net on IRC.