the original kakoune is just cli; the binary has a json ui client option to allow communication with the kakoune server, with the intent of any gui or alternative client being separated from the kak binary/repo. that being said, this seems entirely ai-generated :( i had planned to write a kakoune frontend that supported rtl text (arabic in particular) + unicode, prop fonts, etc., and might look to how some things were done here, but i'd be blown away if this didn't have a great number of rough edges w.r.t. line wrap, unicode, rtl, etc. ...

I'm guessing part of it is design philosophy: mawww doesn't want splits embedded in the editor, for example.