🔍 Glimpse - Interactive Code Search

A lightning-fast, beautiful terminal-based code search tool with real-time results and instant editor integration.

✨ Features

• 🚀 Real-time Search - Results update as you type

• 🎨 Beautiful TUI - Modern, colorful interface with split-pane layout

• ⚡ Lightning Fast - Optimized search with smart file filtering

• 🎯 Instant Editor Integration - Press Enter to open files in VS Code, Vim, or your preferred editor

• 📱 Responsive Design - Clean, compact interface that works in any terminal size

• 🔧 Smart Filtering - Automatically skips binary files and build directories

• ⌨️ Vim-like Navigation - Use ctrl+j/ctrl+k or arrow keys for navigation

• 🔤 Case Toggle - Ctrl+I to switch between case-sensitive and case-insensitive search

• 🧹 Auto-cleanup - Clears terminal after use for a clean workspace

  heavily inspired by https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim

🎯 Why Glimpse?

Traditional tools like grep and find are powerful but:

• ❌ Results are static and hard to navigate
• ❌ No preview of file contents
• ❌ Require complex command syntax
• ❌ Don't integrate with modern editors

Glimpse solves this with:

• ✅ Interactive, real-time search
• ✅ File preview with syntax context
• ✅ One-key editor opening
• ✅ Beautiful, intuitive interface

🚀 Installation

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21 or later

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/pixelknightdev/glimpse.git
cd glimpse
go build -o glimpse cmd/main.go
cp glimpse $(go env GOPATH)/bin/

Install directly

go install github.com/pixelknightdev/glimpse@latest

📖 Usage

Interactive Mode (Default)

# Launch interactive search
glimpse

# Then:
# - Type to search in real-time
# - Use ↑/↓ or ctrl+j/ctrl+k to navigate results
# - Press Enter to open file in editor
# - Press ctrl+c to quit

CLI Mode

# Traditional grep-like output
glimpse --cli "search term"

# Case-insensitive search
glimpse --cli -i "search term"

⌨️ Keyboard Controls

Key	Action
Type	Search in real-time
↑/↓ or ctrl+j/ctrl+k	Navigate through results
Enter	Open selected file in editor
Ctrl+I	Toggle case sensitivity
Ctrl+C	Quit

🎨 Video demo

Screen.Recording.2025-07-25.at.2.42.34.PM.mp4

🛠 Technical Details

Architecture

glimpse/
├── cmd/main.go              # CLI interface and mode routing
├── internal/
│   ├── search/             # Core search engine
│   │   └── search.go      # File traversal and pattern matching
│   └── tui/               # Terminal user interface
│       ├── model.go       # Bubbletea TUI implementation
│       └── editor.go      # Cross-platform editor integration
├── go.mod                 # Dependencies
└── README.md

Performance Optimizations

• Concurrent file processing with goroutines
• Smart binary file detection by extension and content
• Result limiting to prevent memory issues
• Directory exclusion for common build/cache folders
• Early termination when sufficient results found

Supported Editors

• VS Code (code command)
• Vim/Neovim
• System default editor
• Cross-platform support (macOS, Linux, Windows)

🎯 Use Cases

• 🔍 Code exploration - Quickly find function definitions, imports, or patterns
• 🐛 Debugging - Locate error messages, variable usages, or specific logic
• 📚 Learning codebases - Navigate unfamiliar projects with ease
• 🔧 Refactoring - Find all instances of code that needs updating
• 📖 Documentation - Search for comments, TODOs, or documentation strings

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Here are some ways to help:

1. 🐛 Bug Reports - Found an issue? Open a GitHub issue
2. 💡 Feature Requests - Have an idea? Let's discuss it
3. 🛠 Code Contributions - Submit a pull request
4. 📖 Documentation - Help improve our docs
5. 🌟 Spread the word - Star the repo and share with others

Development Setup

git clone https://github.com/pixelknightdev/glimpse.git
cd glimpse
go mod tidy
go run cmd/main.go

📋 Roadmap

• 📦 Package managers - Homebrew, apt, chocolatey
• 🎨 Themes - Customizable color schemes
• 🔧 Config files - User preferences and settings
• 📊 Regex support - Advanced pattern matching
• 📁 File filtering - Include/exclude by file type
• 🔗 Git integration - Search only modified files
• 💾 Search history - Remember recent searches
• 🚀 Fuzzy search - More flexible matching

📊 Comparison

Tool	Real-time	Interactive	Editor Integration	Preview	Performance
Glimpse	✅	✅	✅	✅	⚡
grep	❌	❌	❌	❌	⚡
ripgrep	❌	❌	❌	❌	⚡⚡
fzf	❌	✅	⚠️	❌	⚡
VS Code Search	❌	✅	✅	✅	🐌

🙏 Acknowledgments

Built with these amazing tools:

• Bubbletea - TUI framework
• Lipgloss - Terminal styling
• Bubbles - UI components

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

🌟 Star History

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⭐ Star us on GitHub • 🐛 Report Issues • 💡 Request Features

Made with ❤️ by developers, for developers