[Plugin Release] SmartMotion.nvim – Home-row powered motions built for flow

[FluxxField]

⚠️ Note: This plugin is still in very alpha. I'm exploring a lot of new territory — both in Neovim plugin development and in designing a framework for composable motions. Expect breaking changes as things evolve. Feedback is welcome while I figure out what this can truly become.

I've always loved plugins like hop, flash, and lightspeed — they're all fantastic. But I wanted something even more composable — something modular, that could evolve as my workflows did. So I built SmartMotion.nvim.

---

🚀 What is SmartMotion?

SmartMotion is a modular, high-performance motion plugin for Neovim that uses home-row hinting to navigate quickly and intelligently — but it’s also a motion framework.

It’s built from the ground up to be:

• 💡 Composable – define your own motions using collectors, extractors, filters, and actions.
• 🔁 Flow-oriented – supports chaining motions (like jump → yank → jump) via flow_state.
• 🧠 Smart-action capable – actions like delete, yank, change, and more can be composed or extended.
• 🎨 Fully customizable – tweak the visuals, define new pipelines, create your own modules.
• 🔍 Fast & minimal – only load the motions you need.

---

🔧 Why it’s different

Unlike other plugins, SmartMotion doesn't assume anything. It ships with no motions registered by default — you choose what you want. That means:

• You can create preset motions (e.g., jump-to-word-after-cursor).
• You can combine actions (jump + yank, jump + delete, etc.) using utilities.
• You can build entirely custom behaviors like multi-target actions (e.g., delete all matching targets).

There’s even a new text_search wrapper for 1–2 character searches (like a smarter f/t) and support for hint visibility logic (e.g., dimmed backgrounds, second-char focus after first is selected, etc.).

---

✨ Flow State: Native Feel Meets Smart Labels

One of the biggest goals with SmartMotion was to make motions feel native, even when enhanced with labels.

With flow_state, you can chain motions together or spam keys like w, b, j, and k repeatedly, without losing label-based precision.

Want to map SmartMotion to w? You still get hints, but you also keep the ability to just press w w w like you always have.

That means label-based motions don't break your muscle memory. They extend it.

---

🚧 Future Plans & Extensibility

One of the most exciting parts of SmartMotion is how easy it is to extend.

You can register your own:

• 🧲 Collectors – get targets from a buffer, multiple buffers, git diffs, and more
• 🔍 Extractors – define what a "target" is (words, functions, matches, etc.)
• 🧹 Filters – narrow down targets based on cursor position, visibility, etc.
• 🎯 Actions – do something with the target (jump, yank, delete, highlight, etc.)

We're planning to add more built-in modules, including:

• A multi-buffer lines collector
• A Telescope integration to target search results
• Filters for visible lines, window bounds, and directional motion
• New actions like replace, visual select, or multi-target apply

Eventually, we want users to create their own SmartMotion plugins that provide motion modules, just like you’d build an LSP extension or Treesitter plugin. Think:

my-plugin.nvim exposes a collectors.markdown_headings and extractors.todo_items

SmartMotion makes that modularity possible.

---

📚 Docs & Source

• 🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/FluxxField/smart-motion.nvim
• 📖 Docs

---

📦 Also Check Out

If you're into reading enhancements, I also built bionic-reading.nvim — a simple plugin to add Bionic Reading-style highlighting to your Neovim buffers.

---

🙏 Acknowledgements

This plugin wouldn’t exist without the amazing ideas in plugins like:

• hop.nvim
• flash.nvim
• lightspeed.nvim

My hope is to bring all those brilliant ideas together in a way that’s more modular, extendable, and hackable.

---

💬 Feedback welcome!

If you try it, I’d love your feedback — ideas, bugs, or even just reactions. Especially curious if anyone else has built their own motions before and what you wish you could do better.