Bozhidar Batsov (CIDER's author) announces neat, a new tiny, language-agnostic nREPL client for Emacs. Unlike CIDER, which is tightly coupled to Clojure, neat works with any nREPL server (Babashka, Basilisp, NREPL.NET, etc.) and has zero external dependencies. It consists of four files covering bencode encoding, TCP connections, a comint-based REPL buffer, and a minor mode for source buffers. Features include capability discovery via the nREPL describe op (auto-enabling completions, eldoc, and xref when the server supports them), CIDER-compatible keybindings, multi-connection management, and a library-friendly architecture. The project is also part of a broader effort to formalize nREPL as a multi-language protocol through a spec, reference clients, and a compatibility test suite.
