{"slug": "monaco-editor", "name": "Monaco Editor", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 14, "warners": 4, "score": 1.061, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-11-20", "latest": "2026-09-01", "why": "Recommend either rolling your own with a transparent textbox layered approach or just using Monaco or https://codemirror.net/.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 7, "compare": 0, "warn": 4}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Recommend either rolling your own with a transparent textbox layered approach or just using Monaco or https://codemirror.net/.", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Monaco Editor", "Monaco"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 792277264, "item_id": 49517329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517329", "by": "eleventen", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Recommend either rolling your own with a transparent textbox layered approach or just using Monaco or https://codemirror.net/.", "excerpt": "No syntax highlighting in the editor? I vibecoded a pretty robust browser Filesystem API based markdown editor myself too last week. Recommend either rolling your own with a transparent textbox layered approach or just using Monaco or https://codemirror.net/. I did a markdown kanban thing. Filesystem API is very cool and underused. https://github.com/subdavis/mdello/", "context": "vibecoded a markdown editor", "use_case": "markdown editor syntax highlighting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Markdown Viewer and Editor"}, {"id": 757718081, "item_id": 47357380, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357380", "by": "nyosef26", "date": "2026-03-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It uses Monaco under the hood so it handles huge payloads pretty gracefully", "excerpt": "Hey HN, I do a lot of backend work and I realized I was constantly jumping between different online formatters and decoders that were bloated or slow. I just wanted a set of tools that could make us faster without the lag of server round trips. I built DevNode to fix this for myself. It is a suite of utilities (JSON formatter, JWT decoder, regex tester, etc.) that run completely locally in the browser. Zero server ro", "context": "", "use_case": "Editor component for JSON", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: DevNode.studio, 100% local dev tools to make back end work faster"}, {"id": 741874160, "item_id": 46367135, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46367135", "by": "onion2k", "date": "2025-12-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Microsoft's Monaco editor that's driven from VS Code is quite good", "excerpt": "I have yet to see a good web based text editor with syntax highlighting. I slightly expect you to pull a \"no true Scotsman\" here and suggest it's actually no good because it doesn't really support mobile browsers very well, but Microsoft's Monaco editor that's driven from VS Code is quite good. https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/", "context": "", "use_case": "embedded web code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Font with Built-In Syntax Highlighting (2024)"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 792282240, "item_id": 49517640, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517640", "by": "beerglass", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Monaco at 5MB+ is bigger than the whole app.", "excerpt": "Thanks for your suggestion. I use plain textarea so that Undo, Spellcheck work seamlessly. Monaco at 5MB+ is bigger than the whole app. Will instead try highlight.js for transparent overlay.", "context": "built a markdown editor", "use_case": "markdown editor syntax highlighting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Markdown Viewer and Editor"}, {"id": 746790256, "item_id": 46674391, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674391", "by": "codezero", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "just switched my terminal over to it from Monaco", "excerpt": "I love it, just switched my terminal over to it from Monaco.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Xenia \u2013 A monospaced font built with a custom Python engine"}, {"id": 746480240, "item_id": 46655015, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46655015", "by": "vivzkestrel", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "you should replace monaco here", "excerpt": "- you should replace monaco here https://github.com/21st-dev/1code/blob/47b72fb88bd15cf01cb91f05a15a57e654072432/src/renderer/features/terminal/config.ts#L17 with codemirror 6 - not only is it much more performant but also mobile friendly", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: 1Code \u2013 open-source Cursor-like UI for Claude Code"}]}], "who": [{"by": "eleventen", "context": "vibecoded a markdown editor", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517329", "date": "2026-09-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["markdown editor syntax highlighting", "browser code editor", "code editor component", "editor component for json", "embedded web code editor"], "compared": [{"slug": "codemirror", "name": "CodeMirror", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49514729", "title": "Show HN: Markdown Viewer and Editor", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966569", "title": "Claude Code uses Bun written in Rust now", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48596488", "title": "Plotnine", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528779", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222529", "title": "Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850570", "title": "CodePvP \u2013 LeetCode but Multiplayer", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"warn": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 792282240, "item_id": 49517640, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517640", "by": "beerglass", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Monaco at 5MB+ is bigger than the whole app.", "excerpt": "Thanks for your suggestion. I use plain textarea so that Undo, Spellcheck work seamlessly. Monaco at 5MB+ is bigger than the whole app. Will instead try highlight.js for transparent overlay.", "context": "built a markdown editor", "use_case": "markdown editor syntax highlighting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Markdown Viewer and Editor"}, {"id": 792277264, "item_id": 49517329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517329", "by": "eleventen", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Recommend either rolling your own with a transparent textbox layered approach or just using Monaco or https://codemirror.net/.", "excerpt": "No syntax highlighting in the editor? I vibecoded a pretty robust browser Filesystem API based markdown editor myself too last week. Recommend either rolling your own with a transparent textbox layered approach or just using Monaco or https://codemirror.net/. I did a markdown kanban thing. Filesystem API is very cool and underused. https://github.com/subdavis/mdello/", "context": "vibecoded a markdown editor", "use_case": "markdown editor syntax highlighting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Markdown Viewer and Editor"}, {"id": 783488496, "item_id": 48968031, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48968031", "by": "zarzavat", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Yes, in the Monaco editor", "excerpt": "Yes, in the Monaco editor (https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/). It's not just typechecking, the typescript library is also the reference parser for TypeScript and reference emit. Emitting JS from TypeScript is non-trivial and non-local. It's not just in browsers, you might want to run the typescript library on the edge or in some restricted environment where JS/WASM is OK but native code is not. You may want ", "context": "", "use_case": "Browser code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Code uses Bun written in Rust now"}, {"id": 778304531, "item_id": 48644033, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48644033", "by": "williamcotton", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "language diagnostics for standalone Monaco editors in the browser", "excerpt": "I've always liked the ggplot2 and the Grammar of Graphics approach to plotting so much so that I wrote my own DSL based on it - it is standalone, written in Rust, has WASM bindings (as you can see on the website) and more: https://williamcotton.github.io/algraf It pairs well with a related data translation DSL: https://williamcotton.github.io/pdl And you can see the two working together here: https://williamcotton.gi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plotnine"}, {"id": 776484386, "item_id": 48530274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48530274", "by": "ing33k", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "with Monaco as the SQL editor", "excerpt": "I\u2019m working on \"Fetch\", a native macOS client for ClickHouse. The idea is to make querying ClickHouse feel more like using a polished desktop with ClickHouse native features : It\u2019s built in Swift/SwiftUI with Monaco as the SQL editor. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/gbW4rW7G", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 771591282, "item_id": 48224455, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48224455", "by": "frenchie4111", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "a built in file editor powered by Monaco", "excerpt": "I am building an Agent IDE called Harness. It is somewhat inspired by the previous version of antigravity (and Conductor, and a few others). But with a core goal being open source & hackability. It's centered around git worktrees. The goal is to organize all your AI sessions into somewhat logical places and make it easy to context switch. The secondary goal is to remove the need to open a separate code editor anytime", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch"}, {"id": 765609140, "item_id": 47850571, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850571", "by": "felibuscaglia", "date": "2026-04-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Next 16, Monaco, shadcn", "excerpt": "I got tired of grinding LeetCode alone and was surprised no one had built a proper multiplayer version of it. So I created CodePvP, a web app that drops up to 8 players into a room, serves the same random problem to everyone at once and scores live. Weighted score: correctness 40%, runtime 25%, memory 15%, submission speed 12%, code length 8%. Stack: NestJS + Socket.IO, match state in-memory for now (Redis if it ever", "context": "", "use_case": "Code editor component", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePvP \u2013 LeetCode but Multiplayer"}, {"id": 757718081, "item_id": 47357380, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357380", "by": "nyosef26", "date": "2026-03-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It uses Monaco under the hood so it handles huge payloads pretty gracefully", "excerpt": "Hey HN, I do a lot of backend work and I realized I was constantly jumping between different online formatters and decoders that were bloated or slow. I just wanted a set of tools that could make us faster without the lag of server round trips. I built DevNode to fix this for myself. It is a suite of utilities (JSON formatter, JWT decoder, regex tester, etc.) that run completely locally in the browser. Zero server ro", "context": "", "use_case": "Editor component for JSON", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: DevNode.studio, 100% local dev tools to make back end work faster"}, {"id": 746790256, "item_id": 46674391, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674391", "by": "codezero", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "just switched my terminal over to it from Monaco", "excerpt": "I love it, just switched my terminal over to it from Monaco.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Xenia \u2013 A monospaced font built with a custom Python engine"}, {"id": 746480240, "item_id": 46655015, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46655015", "by": "vivzkestrel", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "you should replace monaco here", "excerpt": "- you should replace monaco here https://github.com/21st-dev/1code/blob/47b72fb88bd15cf01cb91f05a15a57e654072432/src/renderer/features/terminal/config.ts#L17 with codemirror 6 - not only is it much more performant but also mobile friendly", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: 1Code \u2013 open-source Cursor-like UI for Claude Code"}, {"id": 741874160, "item_id": 46367135, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46367135", "by": "onion2k", "date": "2025-12-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Microsoft's Monaco editor that's driven from VS Code is quite good", "excerpt": "I have yet to see a good web based text editor with syntax highlighting. I slightly expect you to pull a \"no true Scotsman\" here and suggest it's actually no good because it doesn't really support mobile browsers very well, but Microsoft's Monaco editor that's driven from VS Code is quite good. https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/", "context": "", "use_case": "embedded web code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Font with Built-In Syntax Highlighting (2024)"}, {"id": 740443072, "item_id": 46277692, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277692", "by": "catapart", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "just loosely wrapped up the monaco editor which I'm guessing is going to be pretty bare", "excerpt": "Daaang! On the one hand, as someone developing a code-example custom element[0] that includes highlighting, this is kind of a \"so close, but not quite\" situation where I really wish this was something I could use for that, but it's probably too heavy to ship around for something so \"simple\" (as far as users' default expectation; not implying that highlighting text is simple). But then, on the other hand, I had given ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arborium: Tree-sitter code highlighting with Native and WASM targets"}, {"id": 737672561, "item_id": 46104535, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46104535", "by": "shubhamjain", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> Landing projects for Set Studio has been extremely difficult, especially as we won\u2019t work on product marketing for AI stuff, from a moral standpoint, but the vast majority of enquiries have been for exactly that I started TextQuery[1] with same moralistic standing. Not in respect of using AI or not, but that most software industry is suffering from rot that places more importance on making money, forcing subscripti", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "It\u2019s been a very hard year"}, {"id": 735872067, "item_id": 45992004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45992004", "by": "diegof79", "date": "2025-11-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A lot of sites started to use Monaco for code editing", "excerpt": "I guess we have different perspectives and information about the \u201crise\u201d of VSCode. I was an Atom user. Even before the acquisition of GitHub the major feature of VSCode was its speed and TS integration. AFAIK, the only common part between Atom and VSCode is Electron. Other than that, VSCode started with a different codebase based on TypeScript, while Atom was originally written in CoffeeScript. Multiple design decisi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Antigravity"}]}