Interesting, if he's architected it for that purpose, it doesn't have to solely be console based.
Neovim separated the client and server parts, and there are a host of clients (QT, HTML/Atom, etc) including the canonical one, from the docs:
When compiled with the |+clientserver| option, Vim can act as a command
server. It accepts messages from a client and executes them. At the same
time, Vim can function as a client and send commands to a Vim server.
Maybe Kakoune does the same, I haven't checked. I also second the first child's note that being console based is a feature.