# A text editor in a morning

September 8, 2026 · ai, coding-practice, tools, future-of-software

Canonical: https://www.romellogoodman.com/writing/a-text-editor-in-a-morning
Originally published: https://mellogood.substack.com/p/a-text-editor-in-a-morning

---

The other morning I saw the title [“Fine, I’ll build my own text editor!”](https://dbushell.com/2026/09/01/text-editor/) and knew what I must do before I opened the link. Most text editors have become bloated with AI features and I’d been craving a simple one that opens and edits files, highlights syntax and that’s it basically. The result is a tiny app called hypertext that I wrote in a matter of hours with Claude.

For all the coding I do, this is still jarring. 2 years ago this might’ve taken months for me to do on nights and weekends, and now it was built in the background while I surfed the web and pasted screenshots and recordings to guide the agent. I know the hedonic treadmill is real and that this too will be commonplace in a few years but it’s nice to stop and just remark on the progress that’s been made. Anyone can make software now.

-Mello

P.S.

My current mac dock

![](https://imagedelivery.net/BtaYDmQqPcGi8C3w4F2NuA/1703f8ce-a75f-45b6-e402-ee067ffe3700/public)