11 ms·

Zed now predicts your next edit with Zeta, our new open model

516 points by ahamez 2y ago

aqueueaqueue 2y ago
Ah that's a model that can run on a shitty old PC right. Like the idea of tools being local again.
- pointlessone 2y ago
  Maybe the model itself can be ran locally but the wa it’s currently integrated in Zed it runs on the server.
- afandian 2y ago
  Zed doesn't run on the PC you describe. It needs a modern GPU that supports Vulkan (not for AI, just to show text on the screen). I liked Zed so much I bought a new graphics card! https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623
  - guipsp 2y ago
    I have sympathy for the reporter, but that CPU is literally 10 years old.
    - afandian 2y ago
      My own graphics card was 5 years old. It was just an Nvidia with outdated Linux drivers. There is no other application on my computer that complained about it. In any case I'd understand needing bleeding edge hardware for 3D gaming, or CAD, or multimedia. But a 10 year old machine _should_ be able to run a text editor IMHO.
boxed 2y ago
I tried CoPilot a while and my biggest gripe was tab for accepting the suggestion. I very often got a ton of AI garbage when I was just trying to indent some code. Tab just doesn't seem like the proper interface for something like this.
- MaikuMori 2y ago
  Doesn't exactly fix the issue, bout you can cancel the suggestion with ESC and then press Tab. Changing the shortcut should be possible, but I haven't tried.
  - boxed 2y ago
    It's a timing issue too. Your hand can be travelling to the keyboard and between that and registering in the OS the AI suggestion inserted itself inbetween.
- fstephany 2y ago
  You are not alone!
- ljm 2y ago
  I actually wish more editors had emacs style indenting where hitting tab anywhere on the line would re-indent it or otherwise cycle through indent levels if it was unclear, especially because you’re unlikely to get copilot suggestions in the middle of a word. Plus, it doesn’t break if there’s a syntax error elsewhere in the file.
  - fhd2 2y ago
    It's one of those weird Emacs things that you get _so_ used to that everything else seems to waste your time. Using code formatters and formatting on save or with a shortcut is OK, but not really the same to me. That's probably why I'm stuck with Emacs: 1. No need to use the mouse. 2. Extremely efficient keyboard usage (maybe not the most efficient, but compared with common IDEs, certainly). Makes it feel like I'm actually using a brain computer interface. The somewhat regular yak shaving is a bit of a bummer though. I like that I can modify everything to be exactly how I like it, but I wouldn't mind sensible defaults. Haven't found a distribution yet that works well without tinkering.
    - ljm 2y ago
      Exactly, and sometimes I don't want to save a file just for indentation to happen as a side-effect, especially if I can do `C-x H TAB` to correctly re-indent the entire thing. That's particularly more helpful when some formatters will actually rewrite your code to either break lines up or squish things back into a one-liner.
notsylver 2y ago
This looks a lot more impressive than a lot of GitHub Copilot alternatives I've seen. I wonder how hard it would be to port this to vscode - using remote models for inline completion always seemed wrong to me, especially with server latency and network issues
- coder543 2y ago
  Based on the blogpost, this appears to be hosted remotely on baseten. The model just happens to be released openly, so you can also download it, but the blogpost doesn't talk about any intention to help you run it locally within the editor. (I agree that would be cool, I'm just commenting on what I see in the article.) On the other hand, network latency itself isn't really that big of a deal... a more powerful GPU server in the cloud can typically run so much faster that it can make up for the added network latency and then some. Running locally is really about privacy and offline use cases, not performance, in my opinion. If you want to try local tab completions, the Continue plugin for VSCode is a good way to try that, but the Zeta model is the first open model that I'm aware of that is more advanced than just FIM.
  - notsylver 2y ago
    I'm stuck using somewhat unreliable starlink to a datacenter ~90ms away, but I can run 7b models fine locally. I agree though, cloud completions aren't unusably slow/unreliable for me, it's mostly about privacy and it being really fun. I tried continue a few times, I could never get consistent results, the models were just too dumb. That's why I'm excited about this model, it seems like a better approach to inline completion and might be the first okay enough™ model for me. Either way, I don't think I can replace copilot until a model can automatically fine tune itself in the background on the code I've written
    - coder543 2y ago
      > Either way, I don't think I can replace copilot until a model can automatically fine tune itself in the background on the code I've written I don't think Copilot does this... it's really just a matter of the editor plug-in being smart enough to grab all of the relevant context and provide that to the model making the completions; a form of RAG. I believe organizations can pay to fine-tune Copilot, but it sounds more involved than something that happens automatically. Depending on when you tried Continue last, one would hope that their RAG pipeline has improved over time. I tried it a few months ago and I thought codegemma-2b (base) acting as a code completion model was fine... certainly not as good as what I've experienced with Cursor. I haven't tried GitHub Copilot in over a year... I really should try it again and see how it is these days.
littlestymaar 2y ago
> A few weeks out from launch, we ran a brief competitive process, and we ended up being really impressed with Baseten. What? I really fail to see how it can make sense for a company like Zed: Baseten bills by the minute so it can be really useful if you need to handle small bursts of compute, but on the flip side they charge you a x5 premium if you end up being billed for complete hours…
- lukaslalinsky 2y ago
  Zed is a VC funded startup. Wasting money in exchange for ease of deployment is expected, no?
ramon156 2y ago
> zeta won't be free forever Well that's a bummer, but also very understandable. I hope they don't make the hop too early, because I still want to grow into Zed before throw my wallet at them. So far it's very promising!
- norman784 2y ago
  But Zeta model is open source, so I suppose you could run it locally if you want. I didn't tried it yet, but I suppose that's their intention by open sourcing it.
  - pr337h4m 2y ago
    Yeah, a 7B param LLM (quantized) is pretty fast on even a previous-generation base model MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM.
freehorse 2y ago
can we run it locally to get autocomplete?
gardenhedge 2y ago
Personally, before I hit tab to confirm a change, I would want to see the before and after rather than just the after
- vinnyhaps 2y ago
  I believe the after change hovers over the before line. So if you go back to the video, e.g. at 27s in, there's a lightning bolt highlighting which line is going to be changed, then there's a box, with "tab" at the end, above the line, highlighting the change that will be performed :)
keyle 2y ago
Good, charge for Zed and secure its future. I'm becoming more and more wanting to use Zed every day, and shifting away from other editors whenever possible. Some LSP implementations are lacking... But it's getting damn close! I love the new release every week. Zed is my recent love, and Ghostty which is also stellar. Hanging by a thread for some sort of lldb/gdb integration with breakpoints and inspection! Hopefully some day, without becoming a bag of turd.
returnInfinity 2y ago
Future CPUs must be able to run this model locally. This is the way. I have spoken.
coder543 2y ago
Two immediate issues that I noticed: 1. If I make a change, then undo, so that change was never made, it still seems to be in the edit history passed to the model, so the model is interested in predicting that change again. This felt too aggressive... maybe the very last edit should be forgotten if it is immediately undone. Maybe only edits that exist against the git diff should be kept... but perhaps that is too limiting. 2. It doesn't seem like the model is getting enough context. The editor would ideally be supplying the model with type hints for the variables in the current context, and based on those type hints being put into the context, it would also pull in some type definitions. (I was testing this on a Go project.) As it is, the model was clearly doing the best it could with the information available, but it needed to be given more information. Related, I wonder if the prediction could be performed in a loop. When the model suggests some code, the editor could "apply" that change so that the language server can see it, and if the language server finds an error in the prediction, the model could be given the error and asked to make another prediction.
yellow_lead 2y ago
Seems like you can't run it locally. I don't like my code being sent to a third party, especially when my employer may not agree with it. I also edit secret/env files in my IDE, so for instance, a private key or API key could get sent, right? I hope there will be a local option later.
- _flux 2y ago
  They use backend configurable at environment variable ZED_PREDICT_EDITS_URL https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e24526479bfbe4e411dfe097afae9da/crates/zeta/src/zeta.rs#L744C67-L744C88 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e2452647... , but I don't know if the /predict_edits/v2 endpoint is something some projects provide or not. At least the model is available and interacting with it seems simple, so it's probably quite realistic to have an open/locally runnable version of it. The model isn't very big.
  - levzzz 2y ago
    yeah, i'd like to be able to run it locally. it should fit well onto my 12gb gpu
    - mbitsnbites 2y ago
      The model is based on Qwen2.5-Coder-7b it seems. I currently run some quantized variant of Qwen2.5-Coder-7b locally with llama.cpp and it fits nicely in the 8GB VRAM of my Radeon 7600 (with excellent performance BTW), so it looks like it should be perfectly possible. I would also only use Zeta locally.
      - jbk 2y ago
        Are you happy with the speed with your 8GB GPU?
- mikaylamaki 2y ago
  > a private key or API key could get sent, right? You can disable this feature on a per-file basis, here’s the relevant setting: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/39c9b1f170cd640cd93ad91ebd1915c3003907a8/assets/settings/default.json#L785 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/39c9b1f170cd640cd...
lordnacho 2y ago
Is there a thing that does this for the terminal? I hate it when I'm fiddling with some complicated command and I have to juggle the flags as well as my personal inputs like paths and such.
- djvv 2y ago
  If you mean an autocomplete for the terminal, there is https://www.warp.dev/ https://www.warp.dev/.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Seeing "Contact Sales" for a terminal application is scary, but whatever, I gave it a try. And it seems like it requires a constant internet connection?! What the hell is this? Sure, we put all our coding-baskets into GitHub, so you can't collaborate when GitHub/internet isn't working, but you want the same experience for your terminal?
- minib 2y ago
  Zed's Inline AI Assistant works in terminal too!
- jamiedumont 2y ago
  Using fish shell has largely solved my gripes with complex commands. It’s not AI autocomplete, but it remembers the complex commands perfectly, so I only need to work it out once. It’s suggestions are also uncanny - the right command and just the right time.
elashri 2y ago
It seem that someone already published different quanta versions of the model [1] . This can be used to define Modelfile to use with ollama locally. But I am not sure that zed allows changing the endpoint of this feature yet (ever). Of course it is opeb source and you can change it but then you will need to build it. [1] https://huggingface.co/mradermacher/zeta-GGUF https://huggingface.co/mradermacher/zeta-GGUF
- _flux 2y ago
  I found https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e24526479bfbe4e411dfe097afae9da/crates/zeta/src/zeta.rs#L744C67-L744C88 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e2452647... which leads me to believe the environment variable ZED_PREDICT_EDITS_URL does control the endpoint.
  - elashri 2y ago
    But is there a setting you can modify after the binary being built? Something like in application settings? Or do you need to build it?
    - master-lincoln 2y ago
      It's an environment variable you can set before starting the program. No need to recompile.
- as-cii 2y ago
  Hey elashri, Zed co-founder here. There currently is no official way of configuring Zed to use Ollama for edit prediction, but I would love to accept a pull request that implements it! It should be relatively straightforward and we're happy to accept contributions here: this has been something I wanted to experiment with for a while but didn't get around to for the launch.
shinryuu 2y ago
I'm curious how they plan to fund the company?
thomascountz 2y ago
If you were looking for the configuration like I was[1][2]: { "show_edit_predictions": <true|false>, "edit_predictions": { "disabled_globs": [<globs>], "mode": <"eager_preview"|"auto"> }, "features": { "edit_prediction_provider": <"copilot"|"supermaven"|"zed"|"none"> } } [1]: https://zed.dev/docs/completions https://zed.dev/docs/completions [2]: https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#edit-predictions https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#edit-predictions
- tripplyons 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing, it would have taken me some time to find this. It should really be included in the article.
mihaaly 2y ago
The sensitive readers please be advised, quite a bit of a rant and angry reactions coming in an overreacting style, please stop here if you are of the sensitive type. The comments are unrelated to this particular product but aimed at the universal approach of the broad topic nowadays. Zero intent of offending anyone specific person is attempted. I am fed up with all these predicting what I want to do. Badly!! Don't guess! Wait, and I will do what I want to do. I do not appreciate it from my wife trying to figure out what I want to say in the middle of my senntence and interrupts before I finish what I am saying, imagine how much I tolerate it from a f computer! I know what I am going to do, you do not! Let me do that already! This level of predicting our asses off everywhere grown to be a f nuisance by now, I cannot simply do and focus on what I want to do because of the many distractions and suggestions and guesses and prediction of me and my actions all the f time are in the way' Wait, and see! At this overly eager level and pushing into everything is a nuisance now! Too many times the acceptance of the - wrong - 'helping suggestion' is in the way too, hijacking that usable elsewhere particular keyboard action, breaking my flow, dragging in the unwanted stupid guess! Recovery of my way of working from incoming and pushy "feature" hiding/colliding my usual actions, forced on me in a "security update" or other bullshit, turning off and recover the working practice already been in place and worked is an unwelcom being in the way too, ruined, now colliding with "smart prediction", not helping. In long term, it is not a definitive help but an around zero sum game. Locally, in specific sittuations, too many times it is a strong negative by the wrong done! Too much problems here and there, accuracy and implementation wise. Forced everywhere. Don't be a smartass, you are just an algorithm not a mind reader! Lay back and listen. If prediction is that smart - being with us since the turn of the millania here and there - then should do my job perfectly and I can go walk outside and collect the money! Until, f off!
- gkbrk 2y ago
  Is someone forcing you at gunpoint to use AI autocomplete while you code? If you think it's not good, just don't use it.
  - mihaaly 2y ago
    [flagged]
NoboruWataya 2y ago
I haven't used Zed much but RustRover seems to have recently switched to a more aggressive/ambitious autocomplete. IIRC tab used to just complete the current word, now it tries to complete the rest of the line. Only it usually gets it wrong. Enter now seems to do what tab used to do and it's been quite annoying having to unlearn tab completing everything. Maybe Zed's prediction is better (though to be honest I don't really care to find out). But I feel like autocomplete is something where usefulness drops off very quickly as the amount of predicted text increases. The thing is, it really has to be 100% correct, because correcting your mostly-correct auto-generated code seems more tedious and frustrating to me than just typing the correct code in the first place.
- homebrewer 2y ago
  It's a new local full-line completion model they've been enabling for one language after another in all their IDEs. I too agree that it's a waste of CPU cycles. The old completion mechanism (a bunch of hardcoded rules plus a bit of machine learning on the side) already was miles ahead of everything else, and with far fewer false-positives. You can disable it by going into 'File | Settings | Plugins' and turning off "Full Line Code Completion".
paradite 2y ago
DeepSeek also has a FIM (Fill In the Middle) completion model via API, if anyone is interested to try out: https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/fim_completion https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/fim_completion
sarosh 2y ago
Interesting that the underlying model, a LoRA fine-tune of Qwen2.5-Coder-32B, relies on synthetic data from Claude[1]: But we had a classic chicken-and-egg problem—we needed data to train the model, but we didn't have any real examples yet. So we started by having Claude generate about 50 synthetic examples that we added to our dataset. We then used that initial fine-tune to ship an early version of Zeta behind a feature flag and started collecting examples from our own team's usage. ... This approach let us quickly build up a solid dataset of around 400 high-quality examples, which improved the model a lot! I checked the training set, but couldn't quickly identify which were 'Claude' produced[2]. Would be interesting to see them distinguished out. [1]: https://zed.dev/blog/edit-prediction https://zed.dev/blog/edit-prediction [2]: https://huggingface.co/datasets/zed-industries/zeta https://huggingface.co/datasets/zed-industries/zeta
- hereonout2 2y ago
  Yes this is very interesting! The hardware, tooling and time required to do a LoRa fine tune like this are extremely accessible. Financially this is also not a big expense and I assume would have cost in the order of $100s of dollars in GPU rentals, possibly less if you ignore experimentation time. So what is a barrier to entry here? The data? Well they didn't have that either so automatically generated a dataset of just 500 examples to achieve the task. I'm sure they spent some time on that but again it doesn't sound an incredibly challenging task. It's worth realising if you've not delved into fine tuning llms before. In terms of time, scale and financial costs there is a world of difference between building a product like this and building a base model.
lionkor 2y ago
> Edit prediction won't be free forever, but right now we're just excited to share and learn. I love Zed, and I'm happy to pay for AI stuff, but I won't be using this until they are done with their rug pull. Once I know how much it costs, I can decide if I want to try integrating it into my workflow. Only THEN will I want to try it, and would be interested in a limited free trial, even just 24 hours. Considering I've seen products like this range from free to hundreds of dollars per month, I'd rather not find out how good it is and then find out I can't afford it. Other than that for anyone wanting to try Zed: - You can only run one LSP per file type, so your Rust will work fine, your C++, too, your Angular will not. - Remote editing does not work on Windows (its not implemented at all), so if you are on windows, you cannot ssh into anything with the editor remote editing feature. This means you cannot use your PC as a thin client to the actual chunky big work machine like you can with vscode. I've seen a PR that adds windows ssh support, but it looked very stale.
- vasco 2y ago
  With the speed that models are coming out at and the amount of VC subsidies in trials my approach is the opposite, I don't get too attached and keep trying different tools and models.
  - winternewt 2y ago
    And that's why most of these endeavors are doomed to fail. Every time they enshittify one service there's a new one with attractive UX that VC's essentially pay you to use instead. And so the previous investment would be lost if they couldn't dump it on naive stock traders by going public before the cat is out of the bag.
- jstummbillig 2y ago
  When products evolve rapidly, pricing will too. Whatever Zed or any actor is doing now or in 6 month on either front says little about what will happen next. Just try what people offer right now, at a price point that you are okay with, right now. In a year, both product and price will probably be moot.
- 2y ago
1f60c 2y ago
I wonder what this means for Support using ollama as an inline_completion_provider https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15968 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15968. ':] I hadn't heard of Baseten before (it seems to be in a hot niche along with Together.ai, OpenRouter, etc.) but I'm glad I did because I was actually noodling on something similar and now I don't have to do that anymore (though it did teach me a lot about Fly.io!). Yay economies of scale!
greener_grass 2y ago
When developing something I tend to have lots of programs open: - The editor - Several terminal windows - Some docs - GitHub PRs - AWS console - Admin tools like PgAdmin - Teams, Slack, etc. When screen-sharing with Zed, do I only get to share the editor? Because (clunky as they are) video call apps let me share everything and this is table-stakes for collaboration.
tombh 2y ago
I really want to like Zed, and their AI may actually be useful. But when I hear things like "new open model" I can only associate it with hype, which is more often about pleasing investors, not end users.
fau 2y ago
It's hard to care about AI features when a year later I still can't even get acceptable font rendering: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992
- coder543 2y ago
  It doesn't seem like the issue has been entirely ignored: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992#issuecomment-2468638244 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992#issuecomme... Out of the 55,000 people who have starred the repo (and countless others who have downloaded Zed without starring the repo), only 184 people have upvoted that issue. In any project, issues have to be triaged. If someone contributed a fix, the Zed team would likely be interested in merging that... the current attempt does not seem to have fixed it to the satisfaction of the commenters. To put priorities into perspective, issue 7992 appears to be in about 20th place on the list of most-upvoted open issues on the tracker.
  - hu3 2y ago
    If font rendering on a text editor is not a priority I wonder what is. It seems to be AI.
    - coder543 2y ago
      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You can also sort the issues and see for yourself what the community thinks should be a priority: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20... I think the takeaway here is not that everyone related to Zed thinks AI should be prioritized over essential features, but that either most developers don't care that much about font rendering or (more likely) most developers have high DPI monitors these days, so this particular bug is just a non-issue for most developers... or else more developers would have upvoted this issue. I have one low-DPI monitor at home, so I am curious to see this issue for myself. If it looks bad when I get back from vacation in a little over a week, maybe I'll add a thumbs-up to that issue, but low-DPI font rendering isn't the reason I haven't switched to Zed. I haven't switched to Zed because of the reasons mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818890 If those issues were resolved, I would probably just use Zed on high DPI monitors. So, yes, for me, certain missing "AI"-related features are currently blocking me from switching to Zed. On the other hand, the community is upvoting plenty of non-AI things more than this particular font rendering bug. Unsurprisingly, different people have different priorities.
mikebelanger 2y ago
I've been using Zed for a few months now. One thing I really like about Zed is its relatively discrete advertising of new features, like this edit prediction one. Its just a banner shown in the upper-left, and it doesn't block me from doing other stuff, or force me to click "Got it" before using the application more. This definitely counters the trend of putting speech balloons/modals/other nonsense that force a user to confirm a new feature. Good job, Zed team!
- barrell 2y ago
  I read this wrong initially — I thought you said one thing you __dislike__ about Zed. I read the whole thing thinking, __oh my god they do exist__
walthamstow 2y ago
Of all the AI aids, autocomplete is my least favourite, at least from my experience with Cursor anyway. It takes me longer to review the autocomplete (I ain't yoloing it in) than it would have done to type the damn thing out. Loving Cursor's cmd+k workflow though, very productive.
- hnfong 2y ago
  It really depends on what you're using the code for. AI generated code is great for quick and dirty stuff you're going to throw away. For example yesterday I wanted to read a small csv and dump the contents of the second column of each row into a separate text file. I took a quick glance at the AI generated python code and just ran it. Saved me maybe 10 minutes of typing the code myself. Small and trivial win for AI, but it's still useful. I do agree for production code it might turn out to be a net negative since AI is pretty good at producing code that looks fine but has subtle problems.
  - walthamstow 2y ago
    How did you prompt the code generation? With natural language or by beginning to write the code yourself? If the former, that is exactly what I am praising.
dankobgd 2y ago
ai is boooring, they should fix the core features before they add useless ai
- salviati 2y ago
  A majority of people thinks it's not useless. What core features do you believe need fixing?
gonational 2y ago
Zed is putting so much focus into AI that their editor is falling apart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041923
rw_panic0_0 2y ago
nice to see they open sourced the model, and it seems relatively small so you can run it locally! Also, please change the video preview, it's hard to see the feature itself, not really obvious what is shown
dakiol 2y ago
Am I the only one who prefers stability instead of a constant rush of features in their text editors/IDEs? If it’s AI related I like them even less. I know I can stick forever with Vim, but damn, I tried Zed and it felt good.
- Arch485 2y ago
  Zed is amazing, and I definitely recommend it. That said, I will not be using their AI features, and if the editor turns into a slow, bloated monster because of them (like Visual Studio and anything made by JetBrains) I will have to ditch it.
  - awfulneutral 2y ago
    This just seems to be the way for code editors. We just have to switch every few years to the next one.
- jswny 2y ago
  I agree. I actually use the AI features in Zed a lot, but there are things I really wish they would prioritize. For example this issue that’s been open for about a year: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/10122 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/10122 Editing large files is an incredibly common use case for an editor
- anon7000 2y ago
  The problem is that practically every company which can spend money is asking developers to explore AI development tools. It’s becoming a bare-minimum feature for many, which is why Cursor has exploded in popularity. The other stuff is awesome and important (debugger when!?), but AI is becoming table stakes for even participating in the current tech economy. It’s all execs are talking about. So it’s not surprising they’ve prioritized this work
dgacmu 2y ago
As a slight tangent, this prompted me to wonder about one of the things I _haven't_ enjoyed in my last two weeks of experimenting with zed: It tries to autocomplete comments for me. Hands off - that's where I think! Fortunately, zed somewhat recently added options to disable these: "edit_predictions_disabled_in": ["comment"], "inline_completions_disabled_in": ["comment"] My life with zed just got a little better. If I switch back to vscode I'll have to figure out the same setting there. :-)
- fredoliveira 2y ago
  FYI, it looks like inline_completions_disabled_in is no longer a thing :-)
  - dgacmu 2y ago
    Ahh, I see - it looks like in the newer version it is being replaced by just edit_predictions_disabled_in. Thanks!
billwear 2y ago
hmm. company mode has been doing part of this job for a long time now.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
idnty 2y ago
I like Zed as an editor and how they’ve integrated LLMs and supports variety. But it’s mind boggling they still don’t have a basic file diff tool. Just why?
- flkiwi 2y ago
  Because they've been too busy chasing the AI fad.
rs186 2y ago
As usual, AI has a higher priority than working on very basic stuff like creating a Windows build. If you guys want to compete with VSCode, think again.
- bobuk 2y ago
  I agree with your irritation, perhaps this link will help https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds
markus_zhang 2y ago
I think the modern Intellisense has the right amount of prediction - offloads enough brain activity without completely relying on something else. AI prediction feels way too much and way too eager to give me something. I don't know about you guys, but programming is an exercise for me, not just to make it work and call it a day. However, AI would be useful if it can offer program structural and pattern recommendations. One big problem I now face, and I believe all hobbyists face too, is that when the program grows larger, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make it well structured and easy to expand -- on the other hand, pre-mature architecturing is also an issue. Reading other people's source is not particularly useful, because 1) You don't know whether it is suitable or even well written, and 2) Usually it is too tough to read other people's source code.
- bennine 2y ago
  > but programming is an exercise for me, not just to make it work and call it a day. The problem is that mid, upper management and execs don't much care for how we feel about it. They are literally measuring who is using AI and how much and will eventually make it into an excuse for poor performance.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Yeah I don't really mind using AI coding in work because it's boring as hell. And getting things done quicker is almost a virtue in the business world. I should have clarified that my original comment is about side projects or serious software engineering.
minzi 2y ago
Still no debugger. I know there is a branch open, but it’s surprising to me that there isn’t a more concentrated effort on getting that over the line. Major props to the folks working on it. I just wish they had more resources and help getting it done.
Verlyn139 2y ago
that website is one of the most unresponsive one in a while
deagle50 2y ago
Does the mouse cursor still not hide while typing in Zed?
flkiwi 2y ago
I'm not a developer, but I use Zed for a lot of things that would be ripe for "AI" application in the current bubble. I, however, have exactly zero use for AI in those cases, and will reconsider any application that pushes AI. It's both that I do not want to use AI features but also (a) I am prohibited from doing so and (b) the focus on deploying AI solutions raises serious concerns about a product's focus on and support of their core features. All of which is to say that Zed's AI features would be more valuable to me, and would drive quite a lot of good will, if they were an entirely removable module. No upsell notices, no suggested uses, just a complete absence of the functionality at the user's choice (like, say, an LSP).
- choilive 2y ago
  You can turn all of the AI features off via the settings.
cameroncooper 2y ago
If the model is open source, I'm hoping for an option to be able to run this feature locally for free. They seem to have support for running other models locally (e.g. deepseek-r1 through Ollama), so I'm hoping they will keep that up with edit prediction.
- barnabee 2y ago
  Yeah, it's a deal-breaker if I can't run the model locally and/or have to sign up for their account.
daft_pink 2y ago
Is it on device? Github code completion works so well.
ekvintroj 2y ago
What a scam is this AI stuff.
gyre007 2y ago
Please add vim leader support to vim mode! :)
fultonb 2y ago
I got beta access to this and love it. It is much more useful than copilot by itself and very useful for an edit that is a little repetitive. I wish I could run the model locally and given that is open source and they have support for Ollama and other OSS tools, I feel like that would be an amazing feature.
lubitelpospat 2y ago
Dear Zed devs - please, fix the bug with the "Rename symbol" functionality! Refactoring is an important feature that many of your users need to have to start using Zed as their main daily driver. Otherwise - great IDE! Please, help me forever forget the VSCode nightmare!
Alifatisk 2y ago
Is there any plans for Zed to add basic functionality like task runner? A button to run / debug code? Only having autocomplete for Java code gives the impression that Zed is only a text editor and not an IDE.
- jswny 2y ago
  Zed already has built in task running… you can use the same thing to call anything that you want like a command to run your project. You can even add custom keybindings to them https://zed.dev/docs/tasks https://zed.dev/docs/tasks
  - Alifatisk 2y ago
    I’m trying to find where I can have it as a button so every time I want to run / debug the code, I can press on it instead lf having it as a shortcut but I haven’t found a way.
- samcat116 2y ago
  > Only having autocomplete for Java code gives the impression that Zed is only a text editor and not an IDE Where did you get the impression they only have support for autocomplete for Java? AFAIK they support any LSP and this new feature is language independent.
  - Alifatisk 2y ago
    > Where did you get the impression they only have support for autocomplete for Java? I’ve used Zed.
    - Shish2k 2y ago
      I'm happily using zed with autocomplete in rust / python / php / javascript / go -- I forget which ones were built-in and which were a one-click "I see you're opening an X file, would you like to download the X language server?" but they all work
zeta0134 2y ago
I have mixed feelings about the name of this model. :P Though I suppose it's my own fault, naming myself after a letter. I'm admittedly a bit surprised that there's a free/paid scheme for a 7b model though, as those are small enough to run locally. I suppose revenue streams are enticing and I can't fault the company for wanting to make money, but I'm also 100% against remote models for privacy reasons, making this a bit of a nonstarter for me. Depending on how heavily integrated this is, the mere presence of a remote-first prediction engine sorta turns me off the idea of the editor as a whole. If there were the option to run the model 100% local (sans internet) then I'd be more interested.
vednig 2y ago
why can't this be a script, as in the old days, it looks like overkill, if you compare change vs compute/efforts, it would be nice to see it evolve though
vijaybritto 2y ago
There begins the downfall. Any great product who jumps on a hype train always ends up crashing
coder543 2y ago
If anyone is interested, the release of Zeta inspired me to write up a blog post this afternoon about LLM tab completions past and future: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053094
bionhoward 2y ago
My thoughts were, what are the terms, are you training on our code, are we able to use completions to compete with you?

516 points by ahamez 2y ago

aqueueaqueue 2y ago

Ah that's a model that can run on a shitty old PC right. Like the idea of tools being local again.

pointlessone 2y ago
Maybe the model itself can be ran locally but the wa it’s currently integrated in Zed it runs on the server.
afandian 2y ago
Zed doesn't run on the PC you describe. It needs a modern GPU that supports Vulkan (not for AI, just to show text on the screen). I liked Zed so much I bought a new graphics card! https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623
- guipsp 2y ago
  I have sympathy for the reporter, but that CPU is literally 10 years old.
  - afandian 2y ago
    My own graphics card was 5 years old. It was just an Nvidia with outdated Linux drivers. There is no other application on my computer that complained about it. In any case I'd understand needing bleeding edge hardware for 3D gaming, or CAD, or multimedia. But a 10 year old machine _should_ be able to run a text editor IMHO.

boxed 2y ago

I tried CoPilot a while and my biggest gripe was tab for accepting the suggestion. I very often got a ton of AI garbage when I was just trying to indent some code. Tab just doesn't seem like the proper interface for something like this.

MaikuMori 2y ago
Doesn't exactly fix the issue, bout you can cancel the suggestion with ESC and then press Tab. Changing the shortcut should be possible, but I haven't tried.
- boxed 2y ago
  It's a timing issue too. Your hand can be travelling to the keyboard and between that and registering in the OS the AI suggestion inserted itself inbetween.
fstephany 2y ago
You are not alone!
ljm 2y ago
I actually wish more editors had emacs style indenting where hitting tab anywhere on the line would re-indent it or otherwise cycle through indent levels if it was unclear, especially because you’re unlikely to get copilot suggestions in the middle of a word. Plus, it doesn’t break if there’s a syntax error elsewhere in the file.
- fhd2 2y ago
  It's one of those weird Emacs things that you get _so_ used to that everything else seems to waste your time. Using code formatters and formatting on save or with a shortcut is OK, but not really the same to me. That's probably why I'm stuck with Emacs: 1. No need to use the mouse. 2. Extremely efficient keyboard usage (maybe not the most efficient, but compared with common IDEs, certainly). Makes it feel like I'm actually using a brain computer interface. The somewhat regular yak shaving is a bit of a bummer though. I like that I can modify everything to be exactly how I like it, but I wouldn't mind sensible defaults. Haven't found a distribution yet that works well without tinkering.
  - ljm 2y ago
    Exactly, and sometimes I don't want to save a file just for indentation to happen as a side-effect, especially if I can do `C-x H TAB` to correctly re-indent the entire thing. That's particularly more helpful when some formatters will actually rewrite your code to either break lines up or squish things back into a one-liner.

notsylver 2y ago

This looks a lot more impressive than a lot of GitHub Copilot alternatives I've seen. I wonder how hard it would be to port this to vscode - using remote models for inline completion always seemed wrong to me, especially with server latency and network issues

coder543 2y ago
Based on the blogpost, this appears to be hosted remotely on baseten. The model just happens to be released openly, so you can also download it, but the blogpost doesn't talk about any intention to help you run it locally within the editor. (I agree that would be cool, I'm just commenting on what I see in the article.) On the other hand, network latency itself isn't really that big of a deal... a more powerful GPU server in the cloud can typically run so much faster that it can make up for the added network latency and then some. Running locally is really about privacy and offline use cases, not performance, in my opinion. If you want to try local tab completions, the Continue plugin for VSCode is a good way to try that, but the Zeta model is the first open model that I'm aware of that is more advanced than just FIM.
- notsylver 2y ago
  I'm stuck using somewhat unreliable starlink to a datacenter ~90ms away, but I can run 7b models fine locally. I agree though, cloud completions aren't unusably slow/unreliable for me, it's mostly about privacy and it being really fun. I tried continue a few times, I could never get consistent results, the models were just too dumb. That's why I'm excited about this model, it seems like a better approach to inline completion and might be the first okay enough™ model for me. Either way, I don't think I can replace copilot until a model can automatically fine tune itself in the background on the code I've written
  - coder543 2y ago
    > Either way, I don't think I can replace copilot until a model can automatically fine tune itself in the background on the code I've written I don't think Copilot does this... it's really just a matter of the editor plug-in being smart enough to grab all of the relevant context and provide that to the model making the completions; a form of RAG. I believe organizations can pay to fine-tune Copilot, but it sounds more involved than something that happens automatically. Depending on when you tried Continue last, one would hope that their RAG pipeline has improved over time. I tried it a few months ago and I thought codegemma-2b (base) acting as a code completion model was fine... certainly not as good as what I've experienced with Cursor. I haven't tried GitHub Copilot in over a year... I really should try it again and see how it is these days.

littlestymaar 2y ago

> A few weeks out from launch, we ran a brief competitive process, and we ended up being really impressed with Baseten. What? I really fail to see how it can make sense for a company like Zed: Baseten bills by the minute so it can be really useful if you need to handle small bursts of compute, but on the flip side they charge you a x5 premium if you end up being billed for complete hours…

lukaslalinsky 2y ago
Zed is a VC funded startup. Wasting money in exchange for ease of deployment is expected, no?

ramon156 2y ago

> zeta won't be free forever Well that's a bummer, but also very understandable. I hope they don't make the hop too early, because I still want to grow into Zed before throw my wallet at them. So far it's very promising!

norman784 2y ago
But Zeta model is open source, so I suppose you could run it locally if you want. I didn't tried it yet, but I suppose that's their intention by open sourcing it.
- pr337h4m 2y ago
  Yeah, a 7B param LLM (quantized) is pretty fast on even a previous-generation base model MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM.

freehorse 2y ago

can we run it locally to get autocomplete?

gardenhedge 2y ago

Personally, before I hit tab to confirm a change, I would want to see the before and after rather than just the after

vinnyhaps 2y ago
I believe the after change hovers over the before line. So if you go back to the video, e.g. at 27s in, there's a lightning bolt highlighting which line is going to be changed, then there's a box, with "tab" at the end, above the line, highlighting the change that will be performed :)

keyle 2y ago

Good, charge for Zed and secure its future. I'm becoming more and more wanting to use Zed every day, and shifting away from other editors whenever possible. Some LSP implementations are lacking... But it's getting damn close! I love the new release every week. Zed is my recent love, and Ghostty which is also stellar. Hanging by a thread for some sort of lldb/gdb integration with breakpoints and inspection! Hopefully some day, without becoming a bag of turd.

returnInfinity 2y ago

Future CPUs must be able to run this model locally. This is the way. I have spoken.

coder543 2y ago

Two immediate issues that I noticed: 1. If I make a change, then undo, so that change was never made, it still seems to be in the edit history passed to the model, so the model is interested in predicting that change again. This felt too aggressive... maybe the very last edit should be forgotten if it is immediately undone. Maybe only edits that exist against the git diff should be kept... but perhaps that is too limiting. 2. It doesn't seem like the model is getting enough context. The editor would ideally be supplying the model with type hints for the variables in the current context, and based on those type hints being put into the context, it would also pull in some type definitions. (I was testing this on a Go project.) As it is, the model was clearly doing the best it could with the information available, but it needed to be given more information. Related, I wonder if the prediction could be performed in a loop. When the model suggests some code, the editor could "apply" that change so that the language server can see it, and if the language server finds an error in the prediction, the model could be given the error and asked to make another prediction.

yellow_lead 2y ago

Seems like you can't run it locally. I don't like my code being sent to a third party, especially when my employer may not agree with it. I also edit secret/env files in my IDE, so for instance, a private key or API key could get sent, right? I hope there will be a local option later.

_flux 2y ago
They use backend configurable at environment variable ZED_PREDICT_EDITS_URL https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e24526479bfbe4e411dfe097afae9da/crates/zeta/src/zeta.rs#L744C67-L744C88 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e2452647... , but I don't know if the /predict_edits/v2 endpoint is something some projects provide or not. At least the model is available and interacting with it seems simple, so it's probably quite realistic to have an open/locally runnable version of it. The model isn't very big.
- levzzz 2y ago
  yeah, i'd like to be able to run it locally. it should fit well onto my 12gb gpu
  - mbitsnbites 2y ago
    The model is based on Qwen2.5-Coder-7b it seems. I currently run some quantized variant of Qwen2.5-Coder-7b locally with llama.cpp and it fits nicely in the 8GB VRAM of my Radeon 7600 (with excellent performance BTW), so it looks like it should be perfectly possible. I would also only use Zeta locally.
    - jbk 2y ago
      Are you happy with the speed with your 8GB GPU?
mikaylamaki 2y ago
> a private key or API key could get sent, right? You can disable this feature on a per-file basis, here’s the relevant setting: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/39c9b1f170cd640cd93ad91ebd1915c3003907a8/assets/settings/default.json#L785 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/39c9b1f170cd640cd...

lordnacho 2y ago

Is there a thing that does this for the terminal? I hate it when I'm fiddling with some complicated command and I have to juggle the flags as well as my personal inputs like paths and such.

djvv 2y ago
If you mean an autocomplete for the terminal, there is https://www.warp.dev/ https://www.warp.dev/.
- diggan 2y ago
  Seeing "Contact Sales" for a terminal application is scary, but whatever, I gave it a try. And it seems like it requires a constant internet connection?! What the hell is this? Sure, we put all our coding-baskets into GitHub, so you can't collaborate when GitHub/internet isn't working, but you want the same experience for your terminal?
minib 2y ago
Zed's Inline AI Assistant works in terminal too!
jamiedumont 2y ago
Using fish shell has largely solved my gripes with complex commands. It’s not AI autocomplete, but it remembers the complex commands perfectly, so I only need to work it out once. It’s suggestions are also uncanny - the right command and just the right time.

elashri 2y ago

It seem that someone already published different quanta versions of the model [1] . This can be used to define Modelfile to use with ollama locally. But I am not sure that zed allows changing the endpoint of this feature yet (ever). Of course it is opeb source and you can change it but then you will need to build it. [1] https://huggingface.co/mradermacher/zeta-GGUF https://huggingface.co/mradermacher/zeta-GGUF

_flux 2y ago
I found https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e24526479bfbe4e411dfe097afae9da/crates/zeta/src/zeta.rs#L744C67-L744C88 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/2f734cbd5e2452647... which leads me to believe the environment variable ZED_PREDICT_EDITS_URL does control the endpoint.
- elashri 2y ago
  But is there a setting you can modify after the binary being built? Something like in application settings? Or do you need to build it?
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    It's an environment variable you can set before starting the program. No need to recompile.
as-cii 2y ago
Hey elashri, Zed co-founder here. There currently is no official way of configuring Zed to use Ollama for edit prediction, but I would love to accept a pull request that implements it! It should be relatively straightforward and we're happy to accept contributions here: this has been something I wanted to experiment with for a while but didn't get around to for the launch.

shinryuu 2y ago

I'm curious how they plan to fund the company?

thomascountz 2y ago

If you were looking for the configuration like I was[1][2]: { "show_edit_predictions": <true|false>, "edit_predictions": { "disabled_globs": [<globs>], "mode": <"eager_preview"|"auto"> }, "features": { "edit_prediction_provider": <"copilot"|"supermaven"|"zed"|"none"> } } [1]: https://zed.dev/docs/completions https://zed.dev/docs/completions [2]: https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#edit-predictions https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#edit-predictions

tripplyons 2y ago
Thanks for sharing, it would have taken me some time to find this. It should really be included in the article.

mihaaly 2y ago

The sensitive readers please be advised, quite a bit of a rant and angry reactions coming in an overreacting style, please stop here if you are of the sensitive type. The comments are unrelated to this particular product but aimed at the universal approach of the broad topic nowadays. Zero intent of offending anyone specific person is attempted. I am fed up with all these predicting what I want to do. Badly!! Don't guess! Wait, and I will do what I want to do. I do not appreciate it from my wife trying to figure out what I want to say in the middle of my senntence and interrupts before I finish what I am saying, imagine how much I tolerate it from a f computer! I know what I am going to do, you do not! Let me do that already! This level of predicting our asses off everywhere grown to be a f nuisance by now, I cannot simply do and focus on what I want to do because of the many distractions and suggestions and guesses and prediction of me and my actions all the f time are in the way' Wait, and see! At this overly eager level and pushing into everything is a nuisance now! Too many times the acceptance of the - wrong - 'helping suggestion' is in the way too, hijacking that usable elsewhere particular keyboard action, breaking my flow, dragging in the unwanted stupid guess! Recovery of my way of working from incoming and pushy "feature" hiding/colliding my usual actions, forced on me in a "security update" or other bullshit, turning off and recover the working practice already been in place and worked is an unwelcom being in the way too, ruined, now colliding with "smart prediction", not helping. In long term, it is not a definitive help but an around zero sum game. Locally, in specific sittuations, too many times it is a strong negative by the wrong done! Too much problems here and there, accuracy and implementation wise. Forced everywhere. Don't be a smartass, you are just an algorithm not a mind reader! Lay back and listen. If prediction is that smart - being with us since the turn of the millania here and there - then should do my job perfectly and I can go walk outside and collect the money! Until, f off!

gkbrk 2y ago
Is someone forcing you at gunpoint to use AI autocomplete while you code? If you think it's not good, just don't use it.
- mihaaly 2y ago
  [flagged]

NoboruWataya 2y ago

I haven't used Zed much but RustRover seems to have recently switched to a more aggressive/ambitious autocomplete. IIRC tab used to just complete the current word, now it tries to complete the rest of the line. Only it usually gets it wrong. Enter now seems to do what tab used to do and it's been quite annoying having to unlearn tab completing everything. Maybe Zed's prediction is better (though to be honest I don't really care to find out). But I feel like autocomplete is something where usefulness drops off very quickly as the amount of predicted text increases. The thing is, it really has to be 100% correct, because correcting your mostly-correct auto-generated code seems more tedious and frustrating to me than just typing the correct code in the first place.

homebrewer 2y ago
It's a new local full-line completion model they've been enabling for one language after another in all their IDEs. I too agree that it's a waste of CPU cycles. The old completion mechanism (a bunch of hardcoded rules plus a bit of machine learning on the side) already was miles ahead of everything else, and with far fewer false-positives. You can disable it by going into 'File | Settings | Plugins' and turning off "Full Line Code Completion".

paradite 2y ago

DeepSeek also has a FIM (Fill In the Middle) completion model via API, if anyone is interested to try out: https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/fim_completion https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/fim_completion

sarosh 2y ago

Interesting that the underlying model, a LoRA fine-tune of Qwen2.5-Coder-32B, relies on synthetic data from Claude[1]: But we had a classic chicken-and-egg problem—we needed data to train the model, but we didn't have any real examples yet. So we started by having Claude generate about 50 synthetic examples that we added to our dataset. We then used that initial fine-tune to ship an early version of Zeta behind a feature flag and started collecting examples from our own team's usage. ... This approach let us quickly build up a solid dataset of around 400 high-quality examples, which improved the model a lot! I checked the training set, but couldn't quickly identify which were 'Claude' produced[2]. Would be interesting to see them distinguished out. [1]: https://zed.dev/blog/edit-prediction https://zed.dev/blog/edit-prediction [2]: https://huggingface.co/datasets/zed-industries/zeta https://huggingface.co/datasets/zed-industries/zeta

hereonout2 2y ago
Yes this is very interesting! The hardware, tooling and time required to do a LoRa fine tune like this are extremely accessible. Financially this is also not a big expense and I assume would have cost in the order of $100s of dollars in GPU rentals, possibly less if you ignore experimentation time. So what is a barrier to entry here? The data? Well they didn't have that either so automatically generated a dataset of just 500 examples to achieve the task. I'm sure they spent some time on that but again it doesn't sound an incredibly challenging task. It's worth realising if you've not delved into fine tuning llms before. In terms of time, scale and financial costs there is a world of difference between building a product like this and building a base model.

lionkor 2y ago

> Edit prediction won't be free forever, but right now we're just excited to share and learn. I love Zed, and I'm happy to pay for AI stuff, but I won't be using this until they are done with their rug pull. Once I know how much it costs, I can decide if I want to try integrating it into my workflow. Only THEN will I want to try it, and would be interested in a limited free trial, even just 24 hours. Considering I've seen products like this range from free to hundreds of dollars per month, I'd rather not find out how good it is and then find out I can't afford it. Other than that for anyone wanting to try Zed: - You can only run one LSP per file type, so your Rust will work fine, your C++, too, your Angular will not. - Remote editing does not work on Windows (its not implemented at all), so if you are on windows, you cannot ssh into anything with the editor remote editing feature. This means you cannot use your PC as a thin client to the actual chunky big work machine like you can with vscode. I've seen a PR that adds windows ssh support, but it looked very stale.

vasco 2y ago
With the speed that models are coming out at and the amount of VC subsidies in trials my approach is the opposite, I don't get too attached and keep trying different tools and models.
- winternewt 2y ago
  And that's why most of these endeavors are doomed to fail. Every time they enshittify one service there's a new one with attractive UX that VC's essentially pay you to use instead. And so the previous investment would be lost if they couldn't dump it on naive stock traders by going public before the cat is out of the bag.
jstummbillig 2y ago
When products evolve rapidly, pricing will too. Whatever Zed or any actor is doing now or in 6 month on either front says little about what will happen next. Just try what people offer right now, at a price point that you are okay with, right now. In a year, both product and price will probably be moot.
2y ago

1f60c 2y ago

I wonder what this means for Support using ollama as an inline_completion_provider https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15968 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15968. ':] I hadn't heard of Baseten before (it seems to be in a hot niche along with Together.ai, OpenRouter, etc.) but I'm glad I did because I was actually noodling on something similar and now I don't have to do that anymore (though it did teach me a lot about Fly.io!). Yay economies of scale!

greener_grass 2y ago

When developing something I tend to have lots of programs open: - The editor - Several terminal windows - Some docs - GitHub PRs - AWS console - Admin tools like PgAdmin - Teams, Slack, etc. When screen-sharing with Zed, do I only get to share the editor? Because (clunky as they are) video call apps let me share everything and this is table-stakes for collaboration.

tombh 2y ago

I really want to like Zed, and their AI may actually be useful. But when I hear things like "new open model" I can only associate it with hype, which is more often about pleasing investors, not end users.

fau 2y ago

It's hard to care about AI features when a year later I still can't even get acceptable font rendering: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992

coder543 2y ago
It doesn't seem like the issue has been entirely ignored: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992#issuecomment-2468638244 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992#issuecomme... Out of the 55,000 people who have starred the repo (and countless others who have downloaded Zed without starring the repo), only 184 people have upvoted that issue. In any project, issues have to be triaged. If someone contributed a fix, the Zed team would likely be interested in merging that... the current attempt does not seem to have fixed it to the satisfaction of the commenters. To put priorities into perspective, issue 7992 appears to be in about 20th place on the list of most-upvoted open issues on the tracker.
- hu3 2y ago
  If font rendering on a text editor is not a priority I wonder what is. It seems to be AI.
  - coder543 2y ago
    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You can also sort the issues and see for yourself what the community thinks should be a priority: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20... I think the takeaway here is not that everyone related to Zed thinks AI should be prioritized over essential features, but that either most developers don't care that much about font rendering or (more likely) most developers have high DPI monitors these days, so this particular bug is just a non-issue for most developers... or else more developers would have upvoted this issue. I have one low-DPI monitor at home, so I am curious to see this issue for myself. If it looks bad when I get back from vacation in a little over a week, maybe I'll add a thumbs-up to that issue, but low-DPI font rendering isn't the reason I haven't switched to Zed. I haven't switched to Zed because of the reasons mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818890 If those issues were resolved, I would probably just use Zed on high DPI monitors. So, yes, for me, certain missing "AI"-related features are currently blocking me from switching to Zed. On the other hand, the community is upvoting plenty of non-AI things more than this particular font rendering bug. Unsurprisingly, different people have different priorities.

mikebelanger 2y ago

I've been using Zed for a few months now. One thing I really like about Zed is its relatively discrete advertising of new features, like this edit prediction one. Its just a banner shown in the upper-left, and it doesn't block me from doing other stuff, or force me to click "Got it" before using the application more. This definitely counters the trend of putting speech balloons/modals/other nonsense that force a user to confirm a new feature. Good job, Zed team!

barrell 2y ago
I read this wrong initially — I thought you said one thing you __dislike__ about Zed. I read the whole thing thinking, __oh my god they do exist__

walthamstow 2y ago

Of all the AI aids, autocomplete is my least favourite, at least from my experience with Cursor anyway. It takes me longer to review the autocomplete (I ain't yoloing it in) than it would have done to type the damn thing out. Loving Cursor's cmd+k workflow though, very productive.

hnfong 2y ago
It really depends on what you're using the code for. AI generated code is great for quick and dirty stuff you're going to throw away. For example yesterday I wanted to read a small csv and dump the contents of the second column of each row into a separate text file. I took a quick glance at the AI generated python code and just ran it. Saved me maybe 10 minutes of typing the code myself. Small and trivial win for AI, but it's still useful. I do agree for production code it might turn out to be a net negative since AI is pretty good at producing code that looks fine but has subtle problems.
- walthamstow 2y ago
  How did you prompt the code generation? With natural language or by beginning to write the code yourself? If the former, that is exactly what I am praising.

dankobgd 2y ago

ai is boooring, they should fix the core features before they add useless ai

salviati 2y ago
A majority of people thinks it's not useless. What core features do you believe need fixing?

gonational 2y ago

Zed is putting so much focus into AI that their editor is falling apart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041923

rw_panic0_0 2y ago

nice to see they open sourced the model, and it seems relatively small so you can run it locally! Also, please change the video preview, it's hard to see the feature itself, not really obvious what is shown

dakiol 2y ago

Am I the only one who prefers stability instead of a constant rush of features in their text editors/IDEs? If it’s AI related I like them even less. I know I can stick forever with Vim, but damn, I tried Zed and it felt good.

Arch485 2y ago
Zed is amazing, and I definitely recommend it. That said, I will not be using their AI features, and if the editor turns into a slow, bloated monster because of them (like Visual Studio and anything made by JetBrains) I will have to ditch it.
- awfulneutral 2y ago
  This just seems to be the way for code editors. We just have to switch every few years to the next one.
jswny 2y ago
I agree. I actually use the AI features in Zed a lot, but there are things I really wish they would prioritize. For example this issue that’s been open for about a year: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/10122 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/10122 Editing large files is an incredibly common use case for an editor
anon7000 2y ago
The problem is that practically every company which can spend money is asking developers to explore AI development tools. It’s becoming a bare-minimum feature for many, which is why Cursor has exploded in popularity. The other stuff is awesome and important (debugger when!?), but AI is becoming table stakes for even participating in the current tech economy. It’s all execs are talking about. So it’s not surprising they’ve prioritized this work

dgacmu 2y ago

As a slight tangent, this prompted me to wonder about one of the things I _haven't_ enjoyed in my last two weeks of experimenting with zed: It tries to autocomplete comments for me. Hands off - that's where I think! Fortunately, zed somewhat recently added options to disable these: "edit_predictions_disabled_in": ["comment"], "inline_completions_disabled_in": ["comment"] My life with zed just got a little better. If I switch back to vscode I'll have to figure out the same setting there. :-)

fredoliveira 2y ago
FYI, it looks like inline_completions_disabled_in is no longer a thing :-)
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Ahh, I see - it looks like in the newer version it is being replaced by just edit_predictions_disabled_in. Thanks!

billwear 2y ago

hmm. company mode has been doing part of this job for a long time now.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

idnty 2y ago

I like Zed as an editor and how they’ve integrated LLMs and supports variety. But it’s mind boggling they still don’t have a basic file diff tool. Just why?

flkiwi 2y ago
Because they've been too busy chasing the AI fad.

rs186 2y ago

As usual, AI has a higher priority than working on very basic stuff like creating a Windows build. If you guys want to compete with VSCode, think again.

bobuk 2y ago
I agree with your irritation, perhaps this link will help https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds

markus_zhang 2y ago

I think the modern Intellisense has the right amount of prediction - offloads enough brain activity without completely relying on something else. AI prediction feels way too much and way too eager to give me something. I don't know about you guys, but programming is an exercise for me, not just to make it work and call it a day. However, AI would be useful if it can offer program structural and pattern recommendations. One big problem I now face, and I believe all hobbyists face too, is that when the program grows larger, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make it well structured and easy to expand -- on the other hand, pre-mature architecturing is also an issue. Reading other people's source is not particularly useful, because 1) You don't know whether it is suitable or even well written, and 2) Usually it is too tough to read other people's source code.

bennine 2y ago
> but programming is an exercise for me, not just to make it work and call it a day. The problem is that mid, upper management and execs don't much care for how we feel about it. They are literally measuring who is using AI and how much and will eventually make it into an excuse for poor performance.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Yeah I don't really mind using AI coding in work because it's boring as hell. And getting things done quicker is almost a virtue in the business world. I should have clarified that my original comment is about side projects or serious software engineering.

minzi 2y ago

Still no debugger. I know there is a branch open, but it’s surprising to me that there isn’t a more concentrated effort on getting that over the line. Major props to the folks working on it. I just wish they had more resources and help getting it done.

Verlyn139 2y ago

that website is one of the most unresponsive one in a while

deagle50 2y ago

Does the mouse cursor still not hide while typing in Zed?

flkiwi 2y ago

I'm not a developer, but I use Zed for a lot of things that would be ripe for "AI" application in the current bubble. I, however, have exactly zero use for AI in those cases, and will reconsider any application that pushes AI. It's both that I do not want to use AI features but also (a) I am prohibited from doing so and (b) the focus on deploying AI solutions raises serious concerns about a product's focus on and support of their core features. All of which is to say that Zed's AI features would be more valuable to me, and would drive quite a lot of good will, if they were an entirely removable module. No upsell notices, no suggested uses, just a complete absence of the functionality at the user's choice (like, say, an LSP).

choilive 2y ago
You can turn all of the AI features off via the settings.

cameroncooper 2y ago

If the model is open source, I'm hoping for an option to be able to run this feature locally for free. They seem to have support for running other models locally (e.g. deepseek-r1 through Ollama), so I'm hoping they will keep that up with edit prediction.

barnabee 2y ago
Yeah, it's a deal-breaker if I can't run the model locally and/or have to sign up for their account.

daft_pink 2y ago

Is it on device? Github code completion works so well.

ekvintroj 2y ago

What a scam is this AI stuff.

gyre007 2y ago

Please add vim leader support to vim mode! :)

fultonb 2y ago

I got beta access to this and love it. It is much more useful than copilot by itself and very useful for an edit that is a little repetitive. I wish I could run the model locally and given that is open source and they have support for Ollama and other OSS tools, I feel like that would be an amazing feature.

lubitelpospat 2y ago

Dear Zed devs - please, fix the bug with the "Rename symbol" functionality! Refactoring is an important feature that many of your users need to have to start using Zed as their main daily driver. Otherwise - great IDE! Please, help me forever forget the VSCode nightmare!

Alifatisk 2y ago

Is there any plans for Zed to add basic functionality like task runner? A button to run / debug code? Only having autocomplete for Java code gives the impression that Zed is only a text editor and not an IDE.

jswny 2y ago
Zed already has built in task running… you can use the same thing to call anything that you want like a command to run your project. You can even add custom keybindings to them https://zed.dev/docs/tasks https://zed.dev/docs/tasks
- Alifatisk 2y ago
  I’m trying to find where I can have it as a button so every time I want to run / debug the code, I can press on it instead lf having it as a shortcut but I haven’t found a way.
samcat116 2y ago
> Only having autocomplete for Java code gives the impression that Zed is only a text editor and not an IDE Where did you get the impression they only have support for autocomplete for Java? AFAIK they support any LSP and this new feature is language independent.
- Alifatisk 2y ago
  > Where did you get the impression they only have support for autocomplete for Java? I’ve used Zed.
  - Shish2k 2y ago
    I'm happily using zed with autocomplete in rust / python / php / javascript / go -- I forget which ones were built-in and which were a one-click "I see you're opening an X file, would you like to download the X language server?" but they all work

zeta0134 2y ago

I have mixed feelings about the name of this model. :P Though I suppose it's my own fault, naming myself after a letter. I'm admittedly a bit surprised that there's a free/paid scheme for a 7b model though, as those are small enough to run locally. I suppose revenue streams are enticing and I can't fault the company for wanting to make money, but I'm also 100% against remote models for privacy reasons, making this a bit of a nonstarter for me. Depending on how heavily integrated this is, the mere presence of a remote-first prediction engine sorta turns me off the idea of the editor as a whole. If there were the option to run the model 100% local (sans internet) then I'd be more interested.

vednig 2y ago

why can't this be a script, as in the old days, it looks like overkill, if you compare change vs compute/efforts, it would be nice to see it evolve though

vijaybritto 2y ago

There begins the downfall. Any great product who jumps on a hype train always ends up crashing

coder543 2y ago

If anyone is interested, the release of Zeta inspired me to write up a blog post this afternoon about LLM tab completions past and future: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053094

bionhoward 2y ago

My thoughts were, what are the terms, are you training on our code, are we able to use completions to compete with you?