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Void dev here! The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, and we think that's because they simply feel better to use by having mor

Void dev here! The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, and we think that's because they simply feel better to use by having more control over the UX. There are certainly a lot of alternatives that are plugins(!), but our differentiation right now is being a full open source IDE and having all the features you get out of the big players (quick edits, agent mode, autocomplete, checkpoints). Surprisingly, all of the big IDEs today (Cursor/Windsurf/Copilot) send your messages through their backend whenever you send a message, and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). Your connection to providers is direct with Void, and it's a lot easier to spin up your own models/providers and host locally or use whatever provider you want. We're planning on building Git branching for agents in the next iteration when LLMs are more independent, and controlling the full IDE experience for that will be really important. I worry plugins will struggle.

bglusman 1y ago
The versioning and git branching sounds really neat, I think! Can you say more about that? Curious if you've looked at/are considering using Jujutsu/JJ[0] in addition or instead of git for this, I've played with it some, but been considering trying it more with new AI coding stuff, it feels like it could be a more natural fit than actually creating explicit commits for every change, while still tracking them all? Just a thought! [0]https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
- jmvldz 1y ago
  I agree the branching sounds super cool!
- danenania 1y ago
  If you're open to something CLI-based, my project Plandex[1] offers git-based branching (and granular versioning) for AI coding. It also has a sandbox (also built on git) that keeps cumulative changes separate from project files until they're ready to apply. 1 - https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex
- andrewpareles 1y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing! We planned on spinning up a new Git branch and shallow Git clone (or possibly worktree/something more optimized) for each agent, and also adding a small auto-merge-with-LLM flow, although something more granular like this might feel better. If we don't use a versioning tool like JJ at first (may just use Git for simplicity at first), we will certainly consider it later on, or might end up building our own.
elAhmo 1y ago
Isn't continue.dev also open source and not using 'their backend' when sending stuff? I didn't use it in a while, but I know it had support for llama, local models for tab completions, etc.
- andrewpareles 1y ago
  Continue is doing great work, but they're an extension (plugin)!
  - miroljub 1y ago
    What’s wrong with a plugin? I don’t see the benefit of an IDE over a plugin.
    - mp5 1y ago
      The extensions API lets you control the sidebar, but you basically don't have control over anything in the editor. We wouldn't have been able to build our inline edit feature, or our navigation UI if we were an extension.
      - LiveTheDream 1y ago
        Continue.dev is an extension and it does inline edits just fine in VS Code and IntelliJ.
        esperent 1y ago
        Is inline edits the same as diff edits? In that case I think Cline and Roo can do it as well.
        mp5 1y ago
        If I understand your question correctly - Cline and Roo both display diffs by using built-in VS Code components, while Cursor/Windsurf/Void have built their own custom UI to display diffs. Very small detail, and just a matter of preference.
huevosabio 1y ago
So this is closer to Zed than Cursor/Windsurf/Continue, right? edit: ahh just saw that it is also a fork of VS Code, so it is indeed OSS Cursor
- andrewpareles 1y ago
  Yep, Void is a VSCode fork, but we're definitely not wed to VSCode! Building our own IDE/browser-port is not out of the picture. We'll have to see where the next iteration of tool-use agents takes us, but we strongly feel writing typescript/rust/react is not the endgame when describing algorithms to a computer, and a text-based editor might not be ideal in 10 years, or even 2.
vunderba 1y ago
I think it'd be worthwhile to call out in a FAQ/comparison table specifically how something like an "AI powered IDE" such as Cursor/Void differs from just using an IDE + a full-featured agentic plugin (VS Codium + Cline).
- monkpit 1y ago
  I agree, having used Cline I am not sure what advantages this would offer, but I would like to know (beyond things like “it’s got an open source ide” - Cline has those too specifically because I can use it in my open source ide)
jjani 1y ago
> The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, Claude Code (neither IDE nor extension) is rapidly gaining ground, it's biggest current limitation being cost, which is likely to get resolved sooner rather than later (Gemini Code anyone?). You're right about the right now, but with the pace at which things are moving, the trends are honestly more relevant than the status quo.
- opdahl 1y ago
  > Claude Code (neither IDE nor extension) is rapidly gaining ground What makes you say that? From what I’m observing it doesn’t seem to be talked much about at all.
  - olalonde 1y ago
    Claude Code's announcement earned 2k+ point on HN when it launched (7th most popular HN submission this year). https://hn.algolia.com/?q=claude+code https://hn.algolia.com/?q=claude+code
    - opdahl 1y ago
      Together with 3.7 Sonnet. And the claim was that it is rapidly gaining ground, not that it sparked initial interest. I still don’t see much proof of adoption. This is actually the first I’ve heard about anyone actually actively using it since its launch.
      - linsomniac 1y ago
        >This is actually the first I’ve heard about anyone actually actively using it I've been reaching for Claude Code first for the last couple weeks. They had offered me a $40 credit after I tried it and didn't really use it, maybe 6 weeks ago, but since I've been using it a lot. I've spent that credit and another $30, and it's REALLY good. One thing I like about Claude Code is you can "/init" and it will create a "CLAUDE.md" that saves off it's understanding of the code, and then you can modify it to give it some working knowledge. I've also tried Codex with OpenAI and o4-mini, and it works very well too, though I have had it crash on me which claude has not. I did try Codex with Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview, but it is really weird. It seems to not be able to do any editing, it'll say "You need to make these edits to this file (and describe high level fixes) and then come back when you're done and I'll tell you the edits to do to this other file." So that integration doesn't seem to be complete. I had high hopes because of the reviews of the new 2.5 Pro. I also tried some claude-like use in the AI panel in Zed yesterday, and made a lot of good progress, it seemed to work pretty well, but then at some point it zeroed out a couple files. I think I might have reached a token limit, it was saying "110K out of 200K" but then something else said "120K" and I wonder if that confused it. With Codex you can compact the history, I didn't see that in Zed. Then at some point my Zed switched from editing to needing me to accept every change. I used nearly the entire trial Zed allowance yesterday asking it to impelement a Galaga-inspired game, with varying success.
SegmentTree 1y ago
I think it's worth mentioning that the Theia IDE is a fully open source VS Code-compatible IDE (not a fork of VS Code) that's actively adding AI features with a focus on transparency and hackability.
- andrewpareles 1y ago
  We considered Theia, and even building our own IDE, but obviously VSCode is just the most popular. Theia might be a good play if Microsoft gets more aggressive about VSCode forks, although it's not clear to us that people will be spending their time writing code in 1-2 years. Chances are definitely not 0 that we end up moving away from VSCode as things progress.
  - conartist6 1y ago
    It's the most popular because the tech is decades old. You're all rushing to copy obsolete technology. Now we have 10 copies of an obsolete technology. We used to know better
    - conartist6 1y ago
      I mean I guess I should thank the 10 teams who forked VSCode for proving beyond all reasonable doubt that VSCode is architecturally obsolete. I was already trying to make that argument, but the 10 forks do it so much better.
nico 1y ago
> and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). And Zed: https://zed.dev https://zed.dev Yesterday on the front page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43912844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43912844
- slowmovintarget 1y ago
  And Emacs, also mentioned in that thread (by me, but still).
- swyx 1y ago
  this joke could not have been more perfectly set up if it were staged. thanks for the guffaw.
  - andrewpareles 1y ago
    I should have been more careful with my wording - I was talking about major VS Code-based IDEs as alternatives. Zed is very impressive, and we've been following them since before Void's launch!
jeron 1y ago
openAI chose to acquire windsurf for 3B instead of building something like Void, very curious decision. awesome project, will be closely following this
lnxg33k1 1y ago
>> The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions Are you sure? I have some expertise with my IDE, some other extension which solve problems for me, a wide range of them, I've learnt shortcuts, troubleshooting, where and who ask for help, but now you're telling me that I am better off leaving all that behind, and it's better for me? ;o
_kidlike 1y ago
Maybe I live in a bubble, but it's surprising to me that nobody mentions Jetbrains in all these discussions. Which in my professional working experience are the only IDEs anyone uses :shrug:
- TingPing 1y ago
  I’m not sure I’ve met a Jetbrains user in projects I’ve worked on. It’s a paid product so just has a small userbase.
  - weberer 1y ago
    Pycharm is extremely popular in the data science world. The Community Edition is free and has 99% of the features most people need. Even when developing with Cursor, I find myself going back to Pycharm just to use the debugger, which I greatly prefer to the debugger used in these VS Code forks.
    - TingPing 1y ago
      Lately I’ve only tried clion, which has no free version. Personally it didn’t function as well as vscode for C++.
      - hiatus 1y ago
        You may have missed it but they did release a free version of clion recently (for personal use). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43914705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43914705
  - whstl 1y ago
    Funny enough, I know a lot of people who work at JetBrains, but only a few end-users. Their use base is completely different. And we’re both in a bubble, I reckon. IntelliJ people also only know a few VSCode users!
  - stusmall 1y ago
    Here are some numbers on their user base in real number and dollar amounts: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/annualreport-2024/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/annualreport-2024/ Their tools are wildly popular in many spaces. It isn't for everyone though. It's totally believable in your circle no one uses their tools, but it isn't niche.

bglusman 1y ago

The versioning and git branching sounds really neat, I think! Can you say more about that? Curious if you've looked at/are considering using Jujutsu/JJ[0] in addition or instead of git for this, I've played with it some, but been considering trying it more with new AI coding stuff, it feels like it could be a more natural fit than actually creating explicit commits for every change, while still tracking them all? Just a thought! [0]https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj

jmvldz 1y ago
I agree the branching sounds super cool!
danenania 1y ago
If you're open to something CLI-based, my project Plandex[1] offers git-based branching (and granular versioning) for AI coding. It also has a sandbox (also built on git) that keeps cumulative changes separate from project files until they're ready to apply. 1 - https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex
andrewpareles 1y ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing! We planned on spinning up a new Git branch and shallow Git clone (or possibly worktree/something more optimized) for each agent, and also adding a small auto-merge-with-LLM flow, although something more granular like this might feel better. If we don't use a versioning tool like JJ at first (may just use Git for simplicity at first), we will certainly consider it later on, or might end up building our own.

elAhmo 1y ago

Isn't continue.dev also open source and not using 'their backend' when sending stuff? I didn't use it in a while, but I know it had support for llama, local models for tab completions, etc.

andrewpareles 1y ago
Continue is doing great work, but they're an extension (plugin)!
- miroljub 1y ago
  What’s wrong with a plugin? I don’t see the benefit of an IDE over a plugin.
  - mp5 1y ago
    The extensions API lets you control the sidebar, but you basically don't have control over anything in the editor. We wouldn't have been able to build our inline edit feature, or our navigation UI if we were an extension.
    - LiveTheDream 1y ago
      Continue.dev is an extension and it does inline edits just fine in VS Code and IntelliJ.
      - esperent 1y ago
        Is inline edits the same as diff edits? In that case I think Cline and Roo can do it as well.
        mp5 1y ago
        If I understand your question correctly - Cline and Roo both display diffs by using built-in VS Code components, while Cursor/Windsurf/Void have built their own custom UI to display diffs. Very small detail, and just a matter of preference.

huevosabio 1y ago

So this is closer to Zed than Cursor/Windsurf/Continue, right? edit: ahh just saw that it is also a fork of VS Code, so it is indeed OSS Cursor

andrewpareles 1y ago
Yep, Void is a VSCode fork, but we're definitely not wed to VSCode! Building our own IDE/browser-port is not out of the picture. We'll have to see where the next iteration of tool-use agents takes us, but we strongly feel writing typescript/rust/react is not the endgame when describing algorithms to a computer, and a text-based editor might not be ideal in 10 years, or even 2.

vunderba 1y ago

I think it'd be worthwhile to call out in a FAQ/comparison table specifically how something like an "AI powered IDE" such as Cursor/Void differs from just using an IDE + a full-featured agentic plugin (VS Codium + Cline).

monkpit 1y ago
I agree, having used Cline I am not sure what advantages this would offer, but I would like to know (beyond things like “it’s got an open source ide” - Cline has those too specifically because I can use it in my open source ide)

jjani 1y ago

> The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, Claude Code (neither IDE nor extension) is rapidly gaining ground, it's biggest current limitation being cost, which is likely to get resolved sooner rather than later (Gemini Code anyone?). You're right about the right now, but with the pace at which things are moving, the trends are honestly more relevant than the status quo.

opdahl 1y ago
> Claude Code (neither IDE nor extension) is rapidly gaining ground What makes you say that? From what I’m observing it doesn’t seem to be talked much about at all.
- olalonde 1y ago
  Claude Code's announcement earned 2k+ point on HN when it launched (7th most popular HN submission this year). https://hn.algolia.com/?q=claude+code https://hn.algolia.com/?q=claude+code
  - opdahl 1y ago
    Together with 3.7 Sonnet. And the claim was that it is rapidly gaining ground, not that it sparked initial interest. I still don’t see much proof of adoption. This is actually the first I’ve heard about anyone actually actively using it since its launch.
    - linsomniac 1y ago
      >This is actually the first I’ve heard about anyone actually actively using it I've been reaching for Claude Code first for the last couple weeks. They had offered me a $40 credit after I tried it and didn't really use it, maybe 6 weeks ago, but since I've been using it a lot. I've spent that credit and another $30, and it's REALLY good. One thing I like about Claude Code is you can "/init" and it will create a "CLAUDE.md" that saves off it's understanding of the code, and then you can modify it to give it some working knowledge. I've also tried Codex with OpenAI and o4-mini, and it works very well too, though I have had it crash on me which claude has not. I did try Codex with Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview, but it is really weird. It seems to not be able to do any editing, it'll say "You need to make these edits to this file (and describe high level fixes) and then come back when you're done and I'll tell you the edits to do to this other file." So that integration doesn't seem to be complete. I had high hopes because of the reviews of the new 2.5 Pro. I also tried some claude-like use in the AI panel in Zed yesterday, and made a lot of good progress, it seemed to work pretty well, but then at some point it zeroed out a couple files. I think I might have reached a token limit, it was saying "110K out of 200K" but then something else said "120K" and I wonder if that confused it. With Codex you can compact the history, I didn't see that in Zed. Then at some point my Zed switched from editing to needing me to accept every change. I used nearly the entire trial Zed allowance yesterday asking it to impelement a Galaga-inspired game, with varying success.

SegmentTree 1y ago

I think it's worth mentioning that the Theia IDE is a fully open source VS Code-compatible IDE (not a fork of VS Code) that's actively adding AI features with a focus on transparency and hackability.

andrewpareles 1y ago
We considered Theia, and even building our own IDE, but obviously VSCode is just the most popular. Theia might be a good play if Microsoft gets more aggressive about VSCode forks, although it's not clear to us that people will be spending their time writing code in 1-2 years. Chances are definitely not 0 that we end up moving away from VSCode as things progress.
- conartist6 1y ago
  It's the most popular because the tech is decades old. You're all rushing to copy obsolete technology. Now we have 10 copies of an obsolete technology. We used to know better
  - conartist6 1y ago
    I mean I guess I should thank the 10 teams who forked VSCode for proving beyond all reasonable doubt that VSCode is architecturally obsolete. I was already trying to make that argument, but the 10 forks do it so much better.

nico 1y ago

> and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). And Zed: https://zed.dev https://zed.dev Yesterday on the front page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43912844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43912844

slowmovintarget 1y ago
And Emacs, also mentioned in that thread (by me, but still).
swyx 1y ago
this joke could not have been more perfectly set up if it were staged. thanks for the guffaw.
- andrewpareles 1y ago
  I should have been more careful with my wording - I was talking about major VS Code-based IDEs as alternatives. Zed is very impressive, and we've been following them since before Void's launch!

jeron 1y ago

openAI chose to acquire windsurf for 3B instead of building something like Void, very curious decision. awesome project, will be closely following this

lnxg33k1 1y ago

>> The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions Are you sure? I have some expertise with my IDE, some other extension which solve problems for me, a wide range of them, I've learnt shortcuts, troubleshooting, where and who ask for help, but now you're telling me that I am better off leaving all that behind, and it's better for me? ;o

_kidlike 1y ago

Maybe I live in a bubble, but it's surprising to me that nobody mentions Jetbrains in all these discussions. Which in my professional working experience are the only IDEs anyone uses :shrug:

TingPing 1y ago
I’m not sure I’ve met a Jetbrains user in projects I’ve worked on. It’s a paid product so just has a small userbase.
- weberer 1y ago
  Pycharm is extremely popular in the data science world. The Community Edition is free and has 99% of the features most people need. Even when developing with Cursor, I find myself going back to Pycharm just to use the debugger, which I greatly prefer to the debugger used in these VS Code forks.
  - TingPing 1y ago
    Lately I’ve only tried clion, which has no free version. Personally it didn’t function as well as vscode for C++.
    - hiatus 1y ago
      You may have missed it but they did release a free version of clion recently (for personal use). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43914705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43914705
- whstl 1y ago
  Funny enough, I know a lot of people who work at JetBrains, but only a few end-users. Their use base is completely different. And we’re both in a bubble, I reckon. IntelliJ people also only know a few VSCode users!
- stusmall 1y ago
  Here are some numbers on their user base in real number and dollar amounts: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/annualreport-2024/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/annualreport-2024/ Their tools are wildly popular in many spaces. It isn't for everyone though. It's totally believable in your circle no one uses their tools, but it isn't niche.