px0 is a fast, ultra-light, remote-first, read-only IDE designed for instant code navigation and review in your browser. It boots in under 1 millisecond and uses approximately 20 MB of RAM, turning your browser into a zero-latency code inspection console.

Can px0 be used to inspect code on remote servers and cloud VMs?

Yes. px0 is remote-first. You can run `px0 -host 0.0.0.0` on any remote server, VM, CI runner, or container and browse the codebase directly from your local web browser over HTTP or TLS, without configuring SSH keys, setting up port-forwarding tunnels, or running heavy server daemons.

Why use a read-only IDE instead of a full editor like VS Code?

Code increasingly arrives from the terminal via AI coding agents, compilers, or remote test runners. Developers spend most of their time in verification, audit, and navigation. Full desktop IDEs take seconds to boot and consume 1.4+ GB of RAM just to read files. px0 starts in under 1 ms with ~20 MB RAM, providing zero-latency code reading without editor bloat.

Does px0 require language servers to work?

No. Language servers are completely optional. px0 automatically detects servers like gopls, rust-analyzer, or clangd on your PATH if present, but falls back instantly to a built-in regex-based outline and fuzzy search if no server is installed.

How does px0 handle large repositories?

px0 uses windowed syntax highlighting and virtual DOM rendering (only rendering visible rows on screen), so opening a 400,000-line file costs the same as a 10-line file. It fuzzy-finds across the Linux kernel (95,710 files) in 6 ms.

How do I install px0?

Run `curl -fsSL https://px0.ai/install.sh | sh` on macOS, Linux, or BSD. Prebuilt binaries for 15 OS and architecture targets are also available on GitHub Releases.

How do I avoid sudo prompts when installing or updating px0?

If px0 was previously installed with sudo, remove the active root-owned binary and reinstall cleanly to user space (~/.local/bin) by running: `sudo rm -f "$(which px0)" && curl -fsSL https://px0.ai/install.sh | sh`. All future updates will then run in user space with zero sudo requirements.

Does px0 collect telemetry or send code to the cloud?

No. px0 never transmits code, file paths, symbol names, or search queries. It collects lightweight, anonymous backend session metrics (start and stop times) strictly to measure daily active users and session duration. You can disable telemetry completely with `px0 -no-telemetry`, `DO_NOT_TRACK=1`, or `PX0_TELEMETRY=0`.

Exploring Massive Codebases with Zero Latency

Opening huge open-source repositories in traditional IDEs often triggers several minutes of indexing, high CPU fan speeds, and gigabytes of memory consumption.

px0 is engineered specifically for fast, read-only inspection of massive codebases.

Step 1: Target a Large Repository

You can point px0 to any large repository on your disk (such as Kubernetes, Chromium, or Linux):

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/torvalds/linux.git /tmp/linux

Step 2: Launch px0

Launch px0 passing the repository path directly:

px0 /tmp/linux

Notice the startup performance:

File tree indexing completes in ~370 ms across 95,000+ files.
Memory usage settles at ~55 MB of RAM (compared to ~1.4 GB in Electron-based editors).

Once px0 opens in your browser (http://127.0.0.1:7777):

Fuzzy File Picker: Press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P), type sched/core.c, and press Enter. The file opens instantly.
Document Outline & Symbols: Press Ctrl+Shift+O (or Cmd+Shift+O) to jump across symbols in the active file.
Workspace Full-Text Search: Press Ctrl+Shift+F (or Cmd+Shift+F) to search across the entire codebase with ripgrep-grade speed.
Git Diffs: Press Ctrl+D to toggle split or inline diff views against HEAD.

Scrolling through hundreds of thousands of lines maintains smooth 60 FPS performance thanks to px0 windowed virtual DOM row rendering.

Exploring Massive Codebases with Zero Latency

Step 1: Target a Large Repository

Step 2: Launch px0

Step 3: Fast Navigation Shortcuts