How do I use Neovim's built-in native snippet support to expand snippets without a plugin?

Explanation

Neovim 0.10 introduced vim.snippet, a built-in snippet engine that lets you expand LSP-style snippets without installing a plugin. It handles tabstops, placeholders, and jumping between fields — the same snippet format used by language servers via completion.

How it works

• vim.snippet.expand(body) expands a snippet string with tabstops and placeholders
• Snippet syntax follows the LSP specification: $1, $2 for tabstops; ${1:default} for tabstops with defaults; $0 for the final cursor position
• vim.snippet.jumpable(direction) checks whether you can jump to the next (1) or previous (-1) tabstop
• vim.snippet.jump(direction) moves to the next or previous tabstop

A minimal insert-mode mapping to expand a snippet and jump with <Tab>:

vim.keymap.set('i', '<Tab>', function()
  if vim.snippet.jumpable(1) then
    vim.snippet.jump(1)
  else
    -- fallback
  end
end)

Example

Expanding a function snippet manually:

vim.snippet.expand('function ${1:name}($2)\n  $0\nend')

After calling this, the cursor lands on name. Pressing <Tab> (with the mapping above) moves to $2, then $0.

Tips

• LSP servers send snippets as completion items — Neovim 0.10 automatically uses vim.snippet to expand them when you accept a completion
• Use vim.snippet.active() to check if a snippet session is currently active before triggering jumps
• This pairs naturally with vim.lsp without requiring nvim-cmp or other completion plugins
• For complex snippet authoring, dedicated plugins like LuaSnip still offer more features (transforms, conditionals, etc.)