Field Notes - neovim

August 15, 2026

Back in the day, I started using Neovim with the LazyVim distribution. As I became a power user, I started building my own Neovim configuration from scratch.

This was challenging but a lot of fun. Building your own Neovim configuration from scratch feels like working on your classic car and installing modern accessories in it. Because the learning curve is steep, I've put my Neovim configuration online in my dotfiles repository.

During my summer vacation, I completely rewrote my configuration using the integrated vim.pack plugin manager introduced in Neovim 0.12. I've learned a lot from this. By sharing my dotfiles, I hope I can give you a head start in building your own.

My Neovim configuration is build for coding in: Lua and Javascript (for my Homey Pro and Home Center 3), Python, Terraform and Ansible (for my Cloud Engineering) and documenting in Markdown. Prettier (Javascript) and Ruff (Python) are configured as code formatters. When saving a file, it's automatically formatted.

Minial Neovim setup

My goal was to create as minimal a setup as possible. I tried to create a setup without any plugins, but coming from VS Code with all the fancy bells and whistles, I found out that I was actually missing some stuff in my workflow. For example, one plugin I have omitted is neo-tree.nvim. If you think in terms of the Vim philosophy, using the Netrw Directory Listing default file browser (command: :Ex) also works well.

With the idea of using as many standard Neovim functions and keymaps as possible, I have set up the configuration in a modular way. The file structure looks as follows:

├── init.lua

├── lua

│ ├── ai.lua

│ ├── autocmds.lua

│ ├── colorschemes.lua

│ ├── filetypes.lua

│ ├── keymaps.lua

│ ├── lsp.lua

│ ├── options.lua

│ ├── plugins.lua

│ ├── statusline.lua

│ └── tabs.lua

└── nvim-pack-lock.json

To get myself into flow state with my perfect coding workflow, I had to use some Neovim plugins. When I started with Neovim, I found it quite difficult to figure out which plugins I needed for what. In the following table, I describe what they do:

A note on AI

Everyone uses AI these days, with Claude, Copilot, Gemini, etc. Personally, I don't like it when AI is shoved down my throat in my editor. VS Code is slowly becoming bloated with AI, and I can't stand it when my cursor keeps jumping because of inline CoPilot suggestions.

However, as a programmer, it is useful to get help from AI. That's why I've added the OpenCode plugin to my Neovim config, so I can call it up whenever I want, because help from AI works best for me when the scope is small and focused, with me still in control. I write the code and use AI when I need some help or want to learn. The opencode.nvim plugin from Nick van Dyke is a nice solution for me by providing the context and connection between Neovim and OpenCode.

Instead of being fully integrated into the editor, opencode.nvim uses OpenCode's existing TUI and API through standard Neovim interfaces. This means I can keep using my own Neovim setup and workflow, with auto-suggestions from the LSP by default and OpenCode available with a key combination.

With my setup, I can easily select a block of Python code using the key combination vaf (select outer function). And with the installed nvim-treesitter-textobjects plugin, Neovim understands the structure of Python functions, so I can select the entire function and then ask OpenCode questions about the code with Ctrl+x.

In the end, have fun with Neovim

In the end, by creating my own config from scratch, Neovim becomes my own tool, built around exactly the way I like to work. An extension of my workflow. Once the keymaps became muscle memory and everything started to feel natural, I stopped thinking about the editor and could just focus on the code. It takes some time to get there, but that's also part of the fun for me.

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