Welcome to mantis

mantis lets you browse, read, and review a codebase right in your terminal — instantly. Point it at a folder and start moving through your files with the arrow keys (or your mouse), with syntax highlighting, rendered markdown, fuzzy search, and git diff/blame/history always one keystroke away.

💡 New here? You only need two things to get started: the Installation page, then the Quick Start. Everything else is optional.

What makes it nice

• ⚡ Lightweight & instant. One small binary, no runtime dependencies, and nothing to configure before your first run. It opens in milliseconds, even over SSH.
• 🌳 A real tree view. Navigate folders with the keyboard or mouse, respecting your .gitignore.
• 🔍 Fuzzy & full-text search. Jump to any file by name (Ctrl+T), or search across the contents of every file (Ctrl+F) — fzf-style, as you type.
• 🎨 Readable files. Syntax highlighting for source code, rendered markdown, and JSON pretty-printing.
• 🔧 Git built in. Per-line blame, working-tree diffs, file history, and status-colored tree entries — no plugins required.
• ⌨️ Discoverable. Press ? for help or Ctrl+P for a searchable command palette. You don’t have to memorize anything.

Try it in five seconds

mantis          # open the current directory
mantis path/to/dir  # open a specific directory
mantis file.md      # open a single file directly

Press ? any time for in-app help, and Ctrl+c to quit.

Where to go next