compl.nvim

April 27, 2026 · View on GitHub

A lightweight, native-first completion experience for Neovim.

Features

Asynchronous completion with customizable debounce for responsiveness
Native snippet integration using Neovim’s built-in snippet system
Support for VS Code style snippets
Ability to apply additional text edits (e.g., auto-imports)
Rich documentation display in info window
Zero flicker completion list updates
Dynamic sorting including frecency-based ranking
Fuzzy matching for flexible, quick word completion
Smart word replacement for post-cursor word completion

Planned Features

Custom completion source API
Function signature help display

Focused on leveraging Neovim's native completion infrastructure (See :h ins-completion) and built-in LSP client, without external dependencies. The goal is to provide a lightweight and performant completion experience that feels like a natural extension of Neovim itself, while maintaining essential features.

Installation

Using the built-in plugin manager (See :h vim.pack):

vim.pack.add {
  "https://github.com/brianaung/compl.nvim",
  -- Optional: a VS Code style snippet collection. See "Using VS Code style custom snippets" below.
  "https://github.com/rafamadriz/friendly-snippets",
}

require("compl").setup {
  -- Default options (no need to set them again)
  completion = {
    fuzzy = false,
    timeout = 100,
  },
  info = {
    enable = true,
    timeout = 100,
  },
  snippet = {
    enable = false,
    paths = {
      -- Optional: point to the package.json manifest of an installed snippet collection.
      vim.fn.stdpath "data" .. "/site/pack/core/opt/friendly-snippets",
    },
  },
}

Recommended VIM Options

-- A set of options for better completion experience. See `:h completeopt`
vim.opt.completeopt = { "menuone", "noselect", "noinsert" }

-- Hides the ins-completion-menu messages. See `:h shm-c`
vim.opt.shortmess:append "c"

Custom Keymaps

By default, this plugin follows ins-completion mappings (See :h ins-completion-menu, :h popupmenu-keys). However, they can be easily remapped.

Below are some recipes using the vim.keymap.set() interface. See :h vim.keymap.set().

Accept completion using <CR>

vim.keymap.set("i", "<CR>", function()
  if vim.fn.complete_info()["selected"] ~= -1 then return "<C-y>" end
  if vim.fn.pumvisible() ~= 0 then return "<C-e><CR>" end
  return "<CR>"
end, { expr = true })

Change selection using <Tab> and <Shift-Tab>

vim.keymap.set("i", "<Tab>", function()
  if vim.fn.pumvisible() ~= 0 then return "<C-n>" end
  return "<Tab>"
end, { expr = true })

vim.keymap.set("i", "<S-Tab>", function()
  if vim.fn.pumvisible() ~= 0 then return "<C-p>" end
  return "<S-Tab>"
end, { expr = true })

Snippet jumps

vim.keymap.set({ "i", "s" }, "<C-k>", function()
  if vim.snippet.active { direction = 1 } then
    return "<cmd>lua vim.snippet.jump(1)<cr>"
  end
end, { expr = true })

vim.keymap.set({ "i", "s" }, "<C-j>", function()
  if vim.snippet.active { direction = -1 } then
    return "<cmd>lua vim.snippet.jump(-1)<cr>"
  end
end, { expr = true })

Using VS Code style custom snippets

You can seamlessly integrate custom snippets into your existing completion workflow without any additional dependencies. Snippets from the specified paths are parsed and formatted into appropriate LSP responses, and are passed into a lightweight internal LSP server, which then returns them as completion items when Neovim's LSP client sends a textDocument/completion request.

Defining Your Own Snippets

If you'd like to define your own snippets for a specific language, you can create a JSON file with your snippets following this syntax.

You’ll then need to create a package.json manifest that will describe how to retrieve snippets for each filetype.

language: The language in the manifest should match the filetype used by Neovim (e.g., vim.bo.filetype).
path: Provide the file path to your snippet JSON file.