When I first used Linux in the 1990s, Werner Bregulla’s Ytree looked promising. Tinkering with Linux again recently, I found that Ytree was still not fully developed, so I set out to push it towards feature completeness.
Writing C at any non-trivial scale is beyond my abilities, so I am experimenting with AI-generated code, guided by Unix and FOSS conventions and what I understand to be best practice. The workflow has evolved from browser chat plus an editor and a diff tool to an agentic IDE, including many checks and QA passes before each commit.
In this workflow, the human steers the design and maintains quality control, while the AI does the heavy lifting. Working this way has enabled me to build the program I have long missed having.
It has taken months of coaxing and verification to get this far, and beta is still months away, but I am releasing v3.0.0-alpha now in the hope that it will be useful to others. It is usable, but expect rough edges, occasional UX/workflow bugs, and some features may still change or be removed.