Show HN: Modo – I built an open-source alternative to Kiro, Cursor, and Windsurf

Summary

The open-source AI IDE that plans before it codes. MIT License · Quick Start · What Modo Adds · Contributing I wanted a small feature in an AI coding tool. Couldn't find a way to suggest it. So I asked myself: how hard is it to actually build something like Kiro, Cursor, or Windsurf? Turns out — not as hard as you'd think. Starting from the Void editor (itself a fork of VS Code), I got to roughly 60–70% of what those tools offer in a short stretch of building. It was genuinely fun. This is Modo. A standalone desktop IDE where prompts become structured plans before they become code. Open source, MIT licensed, yours to hack on. Everything below was built on top of Void's existing AI chat, inline edit (Cmd+K), autocomplete, multi-provider LLM support, tool use, and MCP integration. Here's what's new: Most AI tools go prompt → code. Modo goes prompt → requirements → design → tasks → code. A spec lives in .modo/specs/<name>/ as three markdown files: .modo/specs/auth-flow/ ├── requirements.md # user stories, acceptance criteria ├── design.md # architecture, components, data models └── tasks.md # checklist of implementation steps Create one with Cmd+Shift+S or by picking Spec mode in the session picker. Choose feature or bugfix, then requirements-first or design-first workflow. The agent fills each document, you review, then it executes tasks one by one — marking them done as it goes. Tasks persist to disk. Close the IDE, come back, pick up where you left off. Open any tasks.md and each pending task gets a clickable "▶ Run Task" button inline. A "Run All Pending Tasks" button appears at the top. Running tasks show a spinner, completed ones show a checkmark. The agent marks - [ ] → - [~] → - [x] as it works. Markdown documents in .modo/steering/ that inject project rules into every AI interaction — no need to repeat yourself. --- inclusion: always --- # Project Rules - Use TypeScript strict mode - All endpoints need input validation Three inclusion modes: always — every int...