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Keenan Johns edited this page May 11, 2025 · 1 revision

Advanced Usage

This section explores advanced SmartMotion concepts, best practices, and techniques for building custom motion ecosystems.

🚀 Flow State Behavior

Flow state allows users to chain motions rapidly without showing hints every time.

How It Works

  • When you trigger a motion (like w) and select a target fast enough, SmartMotion enters flow.
  • If you press another valid motion key (like w, b, etc.) within a short time (e.g., 300ms), the motion skips hinting and jumps to the next target.
  • This creates a seamless, native-like experience.

Why It Matters

  • Feels like traditional Vim navigation.
  • Dramatically improves speed and usability when repeating motions.

[!NOTE] > flow_timeout will be configurable in the future and accessible via cfg.

🔂 Action Composition

Instead of writing new actions for every combination (like dw, ct)), SmartMotion supports action merging:

action = merge({ "jump", "delete" })

This behaves like a normal motion + operator combo.

You can even register pre-combined actions like delete_jump or change_jump if needed.

🪝 Module Interoperability

SmartMotion’s registry system means any plugin or config can contribute:

  • Custom extractors
  • New actions
  • Visualizers that open Telescope, float windows, etc.

These are globally available. If a plugin registers telescope_visualizer, you can use it in your pipeline with:

visualizer = "telescope_visualizer"

🔁 Manual Target Injection

You can dynamically build and assign targets to motion_state.targets and skip the pipeline entirely. This is useful for:

  • Manual label systems
  • Search results
  • LSP symbol queries

Highlight Customization

SmartMotion allows full control over highlight groups. You can change foreground colors, add backgrounds, or even point to existing highlight groups in your colorscheme.

Available Groups

Key Default Group Description
hint SmartMotionHint Standard hint label
hint_dim SmartMotionHintDim Dimmed hint label
first_char SmartMotionFirstChar Brighter first label character
first_char_dim SmartMotionFirstCharDim Dimmed first label character
second_char SmartMotionSecondChar Brighter second label character
second_char_dim SmartMotionSecondCharDim Dimmed second label character
dim SmartMotionDim Background dim when not in selection

Setting Custom Highlights

You can pass a highlight table in your config:

require("smart-motion").setup({
  highlight = {
    hint = { fg = "#FFD700", bg = "#222222", bold = true },
    first_char = "Type", -- use an existing highlight group
    dim = "Comment",
  },
})

SmartMotion supports both:

  • Tables with fg, bg, bold, italic, underline.
  • Strings referring to existing highlight groups.

If a string group is invalid, it will fall back to the default.

Reacts to ColorScheme

If your colorscheme changes, SmartMotion will reapply your highlights automatically to ensure consistency.

🧪 Custom Wrapper Flows

Want a 3-character search? Want to ask the user twice? Want a modal search interface? Wrappers give you complete control over how and when run_pipeline() is invoked.

🧰 Debug Tips

  • Use log.debug(...) inside any module to output motion data
  • Temporarily swap in the default visualizer to simplify feedback
  • Set highlights to high-contrast colors to ensure visualizer output is visible

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