ST&#x27;s plugin API is extremely limited. There&#x27;s hardly anything a plugin can do to influence the rendering of the text editor. ST plugins can:<p>* Show autocompletion boxes (e.g. cmd-T)<p>* Update the status bar<p>* Edit text<p>* Tag text regions (which can be used for custom highlighting, e.g. underline errors)<p>Atom plugins can do almost anything by modifying the editor DOM, but more formally they can:<p>* Display compilation error messages inline<p>* Show popups<p>* Display custom panels (e.g. the neat Git conflict resolver) within the editor window<p>* Draw custom settings UI<p>* Extend the file tree sidebar&#x27;s rendering<p>* Create and arrange editor windows<p>* Create custom windows (e.g. Markdown Preview splits the current editor window and shows a live preview on the right-hand side)<p>etc.<p>Atom has also been better designed with regard to pluggability. For example, it comes with a single autocomplete system that packages can extend with custom autocompleters. Plugins don&#x27;t have to invent their own autocompletion system.<p>The fact that ST&#x27;s plugins are executed in a sandbox environment also causes (afaik) issues for plugins that want to use toolchains such as Go.