I use emacs with no colemak specific mods and its fine

For sure it took me a little while to swap from qwerty but its no harder to use now

You could argue thats because it was so un-ergonomic to start off with

but either way - swapping layouts hasn't been a detriment to its use as an editor

If you're referring to Shai's vim setup, you might be interested in checking mine out. It's more standard-Vim-like and far less invasive with fewer changes to the defaults.

I have been using this very happily for 5+ years, and have fixed up as many of Vim's default mappings as I've encountered to match. I prefer the Vim experience I have now to the Qwerty one I had before.

I copied an overview below, but check out the vimrc itself and details here: https://github.com/bunnyfly/dotfiles

Of course, Vim+Colemak aren't for everyone; if you find something that works better for you, good on you!

" The idea is to use HNEI as arrows – keeping the traditional Vim homerow style – and changing as
" little else as possible. This means JKL are free to use and NEI need new keys.
" - k/K is the new n/N.
" - s/S is the new i/I ["inSert"].
" - j/J is the new e/E ["Jump" to EOW].
" - l/L skip to the beginning and end of lines. Much more intuitive than ^/$.
" - Ctrl-l joins lines, making l/L the veritable "Line" key.
" - r replaces i as the "inneR" modifier [e.g. "diw" becomes "drw"].

@bunnyfly, i am ready to check out your setup. at the time you recommended it to me, i had switched to sublime text and all was well. but sublime text has this annoying horizontal scrolling of the viewport when using auto indent. vim doesn't have that problem, so i'm using your setup now. ty

At the risk of repetition, emacs perhaps? ;)

evil has probably the highest fidelity of any vim emulator, while ag.el works similarly to ag.vim but has a more GUI-ish look.

I don't use tabs (at the moment, I use a searchable buffer list that, when I press b, pops up as something like ido-vertical-mode) so can't help you there.

No; you can bind ag to the ex-command :search by

(evil-ex-define-cmd "search" 'ag) 

The resulting buffer can then be scrolled, and matches clicked to jump to them.

Some other ex-bindings I'd recommend are:

;;comment
(evil-ex-define-cmd "com[ment]" 'evilnc-comment-operator) ;;from https://github.com/redguardtoo/evil-nerd-commenter

So, for example, you can comment/uncomment the current line or selection with :com.  The usual ex-stuff works with the operator, so you can comment/uncomment all lines containing "eggs" by :g/eggs/com, or all lines except those containing "eggs" by :v/eggs/com.

;;C-h k
(evil-ex-define-cmd "key" 'describe-key)

;;C-h f
(evil-ex-define-cmd "fun[ction]" 'describe-function)

;;C-h v
(evil-ex-define-cmd "var[iable]" 'describe-variable)

;;C-h m
(evil-ex-define-cmd "bindings" 'describe-mode)

These last are shortcuts to some of emacs' self-documenting features.  If you're not sure what a normal mode key combo does, type :key<Return> then the key combo.  If there's an emacs function [resp. variable] you want information about, :fun<Return> [resp. :var<Return>] and then search for it.  My own config makes gives these searches the appearance of the "ido-vertical-mode" from earlier. 

:bindings, among other things, lists all the keybindings.

Going the extremely GUI route, tweaking the menus and popup menus to add these and others is also possible, though again, not something I've ever tried.  These starting points look promising:

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EasyMenu
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MenuBar

I might try my hand at an EasyMenu later.

I use a very minimal mapping to integrate with vim:

" m,./ to navigate
noremap m h
noremap , j
noremap . k
noremap / l

noremap h /
noremap j m
noremap k .
noremap l ,

For nmemonics, I use
h - hunt
j - jump
k - kommand
l - look reverse (also, it's the opposite of ; ... so use the index finger instead of the pinky)

I have a programmable keyboard with layers as well, so I created a layer that contains these mappings at the press of a button for the situations where I'm remoted in or can't access my rc files.