How to make a Kakoune plugin

Recently, I have fallen in love with the text editor Kakoune. The shortcuts make sense to me and I enjoy modal editing (switching between insert, normal, visual modes). But, NeoVim has an Obsidian plugin that I really enjoy, which Kakoune does not have. So, I took matters into my own hands and made my own. I hope in this article I can teach you how to make your own very simple plugin.

Go to the .config/kak/plugins/ folder and create a directory for your plugin. In it, create a file with the .kak extention, this will be where the code of your plugin will be stored. In your kakrc include the following code:

This allows Kakoune to implement the changes your plugin makes. Whenever you want your updates to be applied exit and enter back into Kakoune.

We will be making a simple "Hello World" plugin, where the user enters the command: :hello-world and "Hello World" will appear at the bottom of the screen. In the .kak file, the first line should be:

User Mode allows the user to store custom mappings with no risk to shadow builtin ones. This is perfect for making commands for a plugin. Using define-command we can create a new command (as the name suggests). We can add the -docstring switch to show the documentation string for the command.

To make the command actually usable, add the code to your file below:

The whole file should look like this:

            
                declare-user-mode your-file-name
    
                define-command -docstring "Prints 'Hello World'" hello-world %{}
    
                map global user n :hello-world
            
        

If you restart Kakoune, you should be able to use the :hello-world command, but it doesn't do anything. Thankfully, we can use bash in Kakoune scripts using evaluate-commands as shown below:

            
                define-command -docstring "Prints 'Hello World'" hello-world %{
                    evaluate-commands %sh{

                    }
                }
            
        

In the %sh{} bash commands can be put in. To print "Hello World" at the bottom of the screen we can use echo:

            
                define-command -docstring "Prints 'Hello World'" hello-world %{
                    evaluate-commands %sh{
                        echo 'echo -markup Hello World'
                    }
                }
            
        

The echo command is used to enter Kakoune commands. The command to be entered, echo -markup Hello World, allows for Hello World to be printed at the bottom of the screen. The -markup switch allows for display text in an information box. The full code should be as follows:

            
                declare-user-mode your-file-name

                define-command -docstring "Prints 'Hello World'" hello-world %{
                    evaluate-commands %sh{
                        echo 'echo -markup Hello World'
                    }
                }

                map global user n :hello-world
            
        

If Kakoune is restarted and the :hello-world command is entered "Hello World" should be shown at the bottom of the screen. We have made our first command.

In this article we made a very simple plugin with a simple Hello World command. Hopefully the reader will use this information to make their own plugins. For more info check out the documentation in Kakoune's github repo in kakoune/doc/pages/commands.asciidoc.