Vimteractive v3: Dual Backend Architecture with Enhanced AI Support

[williamjameshandley]

Summary

This is a major rewrite of vimteractive introducing dual backend support and enhanced AI assistant integration.

Key Features

• Dual Backend Support: Choose between tmux (external terminals) and vim's native terminal
• Enhanced AI Integration: Built-in support for sgpt, gpt-command-line, and aichat with response retrieval
• Robust Command Handling: Commands defined as lists for proper argument escaping
• Response Retrieval: Ctrl-Y support for IPython, AI assistants, and shell REPLs
• Markdown Code Extraction: Automatic extraction of code blocks from AI responses

Architecture Changes

• Dispatcher Pattern: Clean separation between frontend and backend implementations
• Backend Implementations:
  • tmux: External terminals via tmux (default for backward compatibility)
  • vimterminal: Vim's native terminal (no external dependencies)
• Common Utilities: Shared response retrieval and text processing functions

New Dependencies

Core (both backends):

• vim-slime (for sending text to terminals)

Tmux backend only:

• tmux, xterm (or terminal emulator), xdotool (optional for focus management)

Vimterminal backend:

• No additional dependencies!

Configuration

" Choose your backend
let g:vimteractive_backend = 'tmux'        " or 'vimterminal'

" Configure vimterminal split behavior (optional)
let g:vimteractive_vimterminal_config = {
    \ 'vertical': 1,
    \ 'term_rows': 20
    \ }

Migration from v2

For users who want the v2 experience (vim's native terminal):

let g:vimteractive_backend = 'vimterminal'

Security & Robustness Improvements

• Fixed shell injection vulnerabilities
• Added dependency checks for external tools
• Improved error handling and edge case management
• Buffer-local slime configuration to avoid global pollution

Documentation

• Updated README with migration guide and backend comparison
• Comprehensive help documentation with configuration examples
• Architecture documentation for developers

Test plan

• Test tmux backend with multiple REPLs (ipython, aichat, zsh)
• Test vimterminal backend with same REPLs
• Verify response retrieval works for all supported REPLs
• Test backend switching and buffer-local overrides
• Verify dependency checks and graceful degradation
• Test markdown code block extraction
• Verify documentation accuracy

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