Yazi is a blazing-fast terminal file manager written in Rust, built on async I/O and a modular crate architecture. It provides a full-featured TUI with file operations (copy, move, delete, rename, trash), multi-tab support, visual mode, and extensive plugin system via Lua scripting. The architecture is event-driven with an actor model, a generic task scheduler for background operations, and a virtual filesystem abstraction supporting local, SFTP, and custom Lua backends. It includes image preview via multiple protocols (Kitty, Sixel, Chafa, etc.), clipboard integration, and a distributed data service for cross-instance communication. The codebase is highly modular with over 30 internal crates, each with a single responsibility, and demonstrates strong engineering practices including custom serialization (Wire protocol), cross-platform abstractions, and lock-free data structures. It is actively maintained with frequent commits, comprehensive CI/CD, and a detailed coding style guide (AGENTS.md).
lf is a mature terminal file manager written in Go. It provides a full TUI built on tcell/v3, with navigation, previews, search/filter, marks/tags, visual mode, and async file operations that delegate actual file mutations to external shell tools. The application follows a client/server architecture: a daemon listens on a Unix socket while multiple client instances can connect, issue remote commands, and maintain per-client state. Entry points are main.go for CLI parsing, client.go/server.go for lifecycle and IPC, app.go/ui.go for the event loop and rendering, and eval.go for command evaluation. Platform-specific code supports Linux, BSD, and Windows, with filesystem watching via fsnotify and disk-free space queries via platform-specific df_*.go files.