Komorebi
A Cozy Code Editor
Komorebi is a code editor for developers who want to work with an AI, not be led by one. You instill the intention behind every action taken, every edit made. You must have a clear mental map of the code because every file in context is one you picked, constraining the context window to help the AI focus. This AI is your collaborator, not your autopilot.
Anti-Agentic by Design
Most AI coding tools want to run ahead of you — generating entire features, modifying files you didn't ask about, making decisions on your behalf. That feels fast, until you realize you don't understand any of the code.
Agentic tools are fantastic when you need them. But if you start managing multiple teams of AI agents on a regular basis, it puts an impossible evaluation burden on you. That's as if you expected to hear status reports for the detailed work that an entire department did in a single day. This type of burn-out is what researchers call “AI brain fry” — acute cognitive overload from juggling autonomous agents, leaving you exhausted and error-prone. Let them run unsupervised and you fall into cognitive surrender - uncritically accepting AI outputs without engaging your own judgment. In controlled studies, participants blindly followed incorrect AI suggestions 73% of the time. You end up debugging code you've never read, in a folder structure you didn't design, carrying tech debt you didn't know you had. For serious projects, that's not productivity, it's a stressful loan with compounding interest.
Fatigue is not the only symptom of this agentic affliction. In randomized experiments, developers who used AI assistance to complete coding tasks scored 17% lower on conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging , without becoming meaningfully faster. The only AI users who preserved their learning were those who stayed cognitively engaged: asking for explanations, reviewing generated code, thinking before prompting. Delegation didn't help either; it actively eroded the skills needed to supervise the AI in the first place.
Komorebi's thesis is simple: slow is steady, steady is fast. You manually add and remove files from context. You review each turn of changes before moving on. You guide the conversation, step by step. The AI compensates for your weaknesses: speed, recall, connecting the dots, boilerplate. And you compensate for its: judgment, intent, architectural vision. Neither replaces the other; they're better together.
The result is code you actually understand, because you were there for every decision.
Why Cozy?
The Ghibli-inspired aesthetic isn't decoration — it's informed by research. A synthesis of 33 studies confirms that happier workers are more productive workers. Specifically, and most importantly, they found that it's the affective component that matters. How you actually feel doing your work, not whether you're hitting arbitrary goals. Basically, if you're enjoying the journey, you'll get far more done.
That's where the Studio Ghibli angle comes in. In a randomized controlled trial with 518 participants, exposure to Studio Ghibli films measurably increased happiness, calm, sense of exploration, and feelings of purpose and meaning. The effect was strongest when combined with interactive, open-world environments; just the kind of agency-rich interaction a (fun) code editor aims to create.
Moving backgrounds, animated characters, and personas that respond to you as you work aren't gimmicks. They're part of a long-term bet: that the editor you enjoy spending time in is the one where you'll do your best work.
Features
- Conversation Branching
- Explore different directions without losing context. Branch off at any point and come back later.
- Summarize & Continue
- Long conversations get unwieldy. Summarize the context so far and keep going with a clean slate.
- Hot-Swap Models
- Switch your primary or secondary model at any point mid-conversation. No restarts, no lost context.
- Second Opinion
- Not sure about a suggestion? Get a second model's take at the press of a button.
- Automatic Context Filtering
- Intelligent filtering helps surface the most relevant files, while you stay in control of what the model sees.
- Living Workspace
- Ghibli-inspired moving backgrounds, animated characters, and personas that respond to you as you work.
Status
Komorebi is in active development. More details and early access coming soon.
Get in Touch
Interested in early access, or have thoughts on what a better code editor should look like? We'd love to hear from you.