In addition to the functionality provided by clojure-mode and CIDER I use lispy and clj-refactor to round out my tooling needs. Each of these packages is deep. I mean really deep. I'm constantly revisiting each of them to see if there's a new command I can adopt or a hidden gem I've missed.

It turns out that these packages complement each other really well – I wouldn't describe them as competing tools even if they do have some functionality overlap. clj-refactor provides a host of one-off edit recipes (e.g. add a require to the namespace) while lispy provides a composable bottom-up approach to structural editing. Finding the time to invest into using each of these to their fullest extent is hard and as such I've focused the most on digesting and incorporating lispy paired with a pretty small subset of the available clj-refactor refactorings, mostly project and namespace-related.

  • ap Add project dependency My absolute favorite refactoring. Hotload a dependency. Saves you having to visit project.clj and, more importantly, cider-jack-in again after adding a dep to project.clj. But there's more! You get to choose from all available projects and version numbers without leaving your editor to hunt them down. This is especially nice since I'm constantly forgetting the groupid of the libraries I frequently use. I tend to follow this one up with an ar of course.
  • am Add missing libspec My second favorite. Require or import based on the symbol at point. If I'm going to refer, e.g. a function, into my namespace from a library that I haven't required yet I can just type the name of the function and then C-c C-m am the full libspec into my ns form. With some of the more common libs this happens automatically when you type a commonly used namespace alias like (str/... for clojure.string but this has you covered for all other cases.
  • cn Clean ns Cleans up your namespace. I love using this after I've been working with a namespace for a while to clean up unused deps and for the clean, easily digestable ns form.
  • rf Rename file or dir I'm constantly moving namespaces around. Saves you having to update the ns form manually and remembering to use underscores instead of dashes in the file name.

As for lispy there's similarly a lot to like. Some of my favorite bits are:

  • q, a, t: some of the ace- commands. Navigating the point to an open paren like this is awesome. I love that both are one key away (which is the case for most of these, but still!). a is especially great for deleting, copying symbols. t for teleporting expressions and regions is immensely useful.
  • v, N, W: recentering the view is great for ergonomics. I use vertical monitors and v let's me mindlessly pull what I'm editing into view instead of craning my neck. N for narrowing has a similar use-case but with the added benefit of allowing you to focus on just that expression. This is a really nice way to focus up.
  • i: fix up whitespace and indentation with a single keystroke. Yes please.

Both lispy and clj-refactor also require very little configuration. I'll leave you with my configs if you want to get started with either package and need a jumping off point. Oh, and lastly, I'd like to express my gratitude to the authors of these packages: thank you so much for what you do! 

(add-hook 'cider-mode-hook #'clj-refactor-mode)

(add-hook 'clojure-mode-hook #'lispy-mode)

(use-package clj-refactor
  :ensure t
  :defer t
  :config (cljr-add-keybindings-with-prefix "C-c C-m"))

(use-package lispy
  :ensure t
  :defer t
  :init (setq lispy-compat '(cider)))