March 10, 2026
No AI? No chill
EVi, a Hard-Fork of Vim
Vim spin-off swears off “AI taint” — commenters demand receipts, crack EVIL jokes
TLDR: EVi is a new fork of the Vim text editor that vows to avoid any AI involvement in its code. Commenters are split between asking for concrete proof of “AI taint,” linking one commit crediting “Claude,” and roasting the dramatic branding with EVIL jokes—making transparency the community’s top demand.
EVi, a new spin-off of the famously old-school text editor Vim, just launched with one big promise: avoid “AI taint.” It’s a hard fork of Vim v9.1.2073, still packed with classic features like undo history, syntax highlighting, and even a GUI, and shipped from Codeberg. It’s still charityware too—donations encouraged for Ugandan orphans. Sounds wholesome… until the comments lit up.
The hottest debate: what even is “AI taint”? One puzzled user asked plainly, “What is AI-taint and why is regular Vim tainted?” Another demanded specifics, saying it’s hard to justify a new project without pointing to the “offending” bits—and hey, you can always compile an old Vim yourself. A detective-type chimed in with “receipts,” linking to a Vim commit crediting “Claude” as a co-author (this one), but admitted there weren’t many recent AI-related issues to find.
Meanwhile, the snark flowed. “Don’t be shy. Tell us what you really think,” quipped one commenter at the dramatic “AI taint” phrasing. Another turned the name into a meme, joking it should be called EVIL—a wink at Emacs’s Vim emulation mode named “Evil.” The vibe right now: less code, more courtroom. Until the devs show exactly where AI touched Vim, the crowd wants proof over promises, jokes over jargon, and drama over diff logs.
Key Points
- •EVi is a hard fork of Vim v9.1.2073 (Jan 2026) aiming to extend Vim while “avoiding AI taint.”
- •At present, EVi is only distributed via Codeberg.
- •EVi retains Vi compatibility and inherits Vim features including multi-level undo, syntax highlighting, and a GUI.
- •Cross-platform installation is supported with README guides for Amiga, Unix, MS‑DOS/Windows, Macintosh, Haiku, and VMS; build instructions are in src/INSTALL.
- •EVi uses Vim’s charityware model, is GPL-compatible, encourages donations to orphans in Uganda, and is currently at version 10.0.