7 ms·

Parallel agents in Zed

279 points by ajeetdsouza 5mo ago

gigatexal 5mo ago
Becoming more and more useful by teh day. Love to see it.
orliesaurus 5mo ago
I just installed Zed last night and enabled vim mode, can't wait to try this!
testfrequency 5mo ago
Warp launched something similar a week or so ago, but the Zed implementation I find a lot more logical. Will give Zed another try, as I’m overdue for my monthly “maybe I should try this terminal/IDE” itch.
- dmix 5mo ago
  I like Warp but something about it is very opaque and confusing. Maybe it has a learning curve I haven't committed to, or it's just very alpha and evolving often.
  - dewey 5mo ago
    Agreed, I exclusively use Warp for server maintenance and ssh'ing into servers, it does that better than Claude itself but the UI is always confusing, especially after their recent changes.
2001zhaozhao 5mo ago
It's pretty clear by this point that everyone is going towards parallel agents and worktrees, but TBH I am surprised to see an offering from Zed, seeing how heavy they lean into being editor-heavy and having AI features be strictly optional. The key advantages Zed has are being agent-agnostic (so not a first party UI like Claude/Codex/Cursor Desktop), supporting multiple repositories on the same agent via creating a worktree for each automatically, and having a high quality custom agent UI rather than wrapping over CLIs (I've used their IDE's agent UI in the past and it's great). AFAIK, this is the first mainstream tool that supports all of these features.
- cpill 5mo ago
  yeah, but they don't support a lot of the features Claude does like MCP integration. we've booked this up to logfire (telemetry provider) and it's a game changer when doing optimisation or diagnosis of bugs. plugins and skills also missing. but it is nice to switch between provider easily
  - teaearlgraycold 5mo ago
    I’m using MCPs with Claude Code in the Zed UI
  - logicprog 5mo ago
    The built in agent supports MCPs, as do the agents you can use through ACP that do already.
  - somnium_sn 5mo ago
    Little historic sidenote: Zed was the first MCP client next to Claude Desktop
  - marton78 5mo ago
    This is false. Zed does support skills and also MCP servers.
sync 5mo ago
I'm having a hard time adjusting to the Project Panel on the right (and, at least for me, hidden by default) - seems like they're trying to bury the concept of a 'file'? It's certainly interesting though, and I'll give it some time - the post says "It feels more natural once you've spent a little time with it"
- KetoManx64 5mo ago
  You can move it to the other side panel by right clicking the Project icon that toggles the view.
- qn9n 5mo ago
  I think it's more that you don't need to look at the actual tree structure all that often, especially when most codebases follow logical and conventionalised structures you remember these structures and can use Command-P to search for files individually to open and the tree structure becomes something you peek at infrequently to ensure that everything is going in it's right place.
jamie_ca 5mo ago
I'm buying into this workflow more the more I use it, but the real gamechanger is (a) parallel threads in worktrees, with (b) enough lifecycle hooks to treat them similarly to spinning up a VM. Specifically for me that means that after I create a worktree I get some local config files copied over and Postgres duplicating my local dev and test databases so I can test in isolation, and then when I close out a worktree it deletes those databases. The best at that that I've found is Conductor, but I can't use it at work because we only have Copilot and they're locked to a Claude/Codex backend. Arbor is close, but it's not under as active development and has a lot of rough edges. Opencode GUI has create hooks but not teardown. If Zed can hook that up _and_ also keep its great editor roots, that'll definitely be a game changer.
- rtfeldman 5mo ago
  > The best at that that I've found is Conductor, but I can't use it at work because we only have Copilot and they're locked to a Claude/Codex backend. FYI, you can use Copilot directly in Zed!
- anthony-eid 5mo ago
  We support create git worktree hooks too
  - saturn_vk 5mo ago
    Is there an example of this?
    - jamie_ca 5mo ago
      The worktree create hook is documented https://zed.dev/docs/tasks?highlight=hook#hooks https://zed.dev/docs/tasks?highlight=hook#hooks And then I guess setting up tasks for the cleanup part, but it'd be great to see that get automated too so I don't need to remember it.
- danelliot 5mo ago
  [dead]
verse 5mo ago
I personally don't love the idea of the default layout pushing aside my code and filetree to make space for AI tools I really like Zed, I use it every day. But, if I'd seen this layout when I first installed, I never would have taken it seriously I imagine this will push some new users away
- ellieh 5mo ago
  > I imagine this will push some new users away I suspect it will gain them more users than it will lose Most other tools doing this are heavy, buggy, and built on electron
  - verse 5mo ago
    Fair point, the existing tools probably suck. They'll definitely lose me though if the whole plan is to turn this into Codex running on GPUI.
- mjrpes 5mo ago
  Luckily it's very easy to change, although a bit unintuitive for new users. You right-click the small icon for each type of panel in the bottom bar, and select where you want it to be docked. Left click toggles the panel into view.
- xpe 5mo ago
  This was also my first impression. But it seems to me the changes are mostly about swapping what panels dock where (left or right) and maybe some additions/tweaks around the AI panels. On macOS these are still the same: ⌘B : toggle the left dock ⌘R : toggle the right dock If you opt-in to the new layout, the panels that used to sit in the left dock are now in the right dock. I will give it a try even for classic coding. One can change what panels get docked where from the settings window.
- brikym 5mo ago
  It will also pull more users in. I don't want to be looking at code. I want more of a codex style app where it's easy to shove all my projects in one place and context switch endlessly.
subarctic 5mo ago
I liked the idea of the new layout with the agent thread on the left, it goes hand-in-hand with having multiple threads that are easy to switch between and running concurrently, but I switched back because my file tree disappeared and I couldn't easily see how to add it back
- maxbrunsfeld 5mo ago
  In the new layout, the project panel and git panel are just moved to the right side, so that the agent panel could be on the left, and you could still view both at the same time.
jotato 5mo ago
Yesterday, I determined to move to Zed because they weren't pushing this stuff :(
- tailscaler2026 5mo ago
  zed's got about 60 billion reasons to add an agent panel
- rtfeldman 5mo ago
  You can disable all AI features in Zed with a single setting: https://zed.dev/blog/disable-ai-features https://zed.dev/blog/disable-ai-features
  - throwatdem12311 5mo ago
    It doesn’t mean the bulk of their effort isn’t going to AI slopshit.
    - indra_varta 5mo ago
      I disagree. All their "AI slopshit" features are useful, and the fact that you can just.. turn them off and get a great editor regardless is what I like about it.
    - KetoManx64 5mo ago
      As compared to the slopshit that you'd rather have them working on to fit your personal needs?
    - nsonha 5mo ago
      so what should they do instead? reinventing the editor? ...wait they did that already.
- Groxx 5mo ago
  Zed was one of the very-early editors to jump on adding AI. Might want to look elsewhere.
- 5mo ago
xiej 5mo ago
Funny how Zed's tagline is Love your editor again Zed is a minimal code editor crafted for speed and collaboration with humans and AI. At home, I don't use any AI when coding, to keep my brain sharp. But it's clear that Zed's focus is on AI integration because that's where the money's going (seriously, where is the setting to have a different ui icon size vs ui font size). Is there any editor still being being developed and focusing on the experience of coding by hand?
- taude 5mo ago
  Emacs. ;)
  - mplanchard 5mo ago
    100%. I recently got rid of my lsp-booster and similar kludges because the builtin language server client (eglot) is now fast enough without it, even on large projects. And if you want AI integration at your choice and control, agent-shell (and chatgpt-shell, which is LLM-agnostic despite the name) are great packages. They’re totally hackable with elisp like you’d expect, which I personally haven’t done a ton with, because I use AI pretty sparingly, but I imagine the crowd here could come up with plenty of ideas for how to program your editor and your agent interface together.
- modernerd 5mo ago
  > seriously, where is the setting to have a different ui size vs ui font size Search for font size in preferences. You'll see a 'font size' under 'buffer' (editor), under 'UI Font', and under 'Agent Panel' to let you control font sizes in all of those places independently. > Is there any editor still being being developed and focusing on the experience of coding by hand? Zed lets you hand-edit too! It's fast and decent. vim, neovim, Emacs, Helix, and JetBrains products continue to do that well too. There are still more traditional IDEs/editors than pure AI ones. You can also toggle AI features off in Zed from preferences if you want to.
  - xiej 5mo ago
    ah I forgot a word, I meant the ui icon size. If I bump up the ui font size so that I can distinguish the icons apart on my large monitor, the ui text becomes comically large. I do use Zed without AI features, it's just a bit of a disappointment (though understandable) since it was originally marketed as just a nice speedy editor.
fishgoesblub 5mo ago
I remember when Zed's main thing was "collaborative" editing. Not as profitable as AI I suppose.
danielvaughn 5mo ago
What I want is a stateful file-writing layer that is aware of all clients (aka agents and humans) and their activity. It provides its own locking mechanisms, and prevents agents from overwriting each others work. That way you could have multiple agents operating on the same codebase, without having to futz with worktrees and all that.
- agdexai 5mo ago
  [dead]
lfx 5mo ago
I loved zed for over 1 year, told for everybody to use it, because it was so fast and great. But now using claude-code,gemini-cli,codex,etc it just seems less relevant. Just opened nvim with lazyvim and it feels nice, since I'm in terminal anyway it just feels more natural. Still have zed opened, still like it but I guess honeymoon is over.
- sieabahlpark 5mo ago
  [dead]
gaigalas 5mo ago
I've been a Sublime Text user for years, then a VSCode for years. Been trying Zed for the past couple weeks and it has been a good experience.
gherkinnn 5mo ago
I've used Zed since the very beginning and I remain a fan. Its LLM integration so far has been a lot more pleasant than what I see in others and the editor is perfectly usable without using LLMs. Its multi buffer and speed sound trivial but using anything else feels wrong now.
submeta 5mo ago
Is this any different from a setup where I use a terminal with tabs and splits, running my favorite editor in one or more panes, and several agents (Claude Code and Codex) in several other panes and tabs? Edit: Although I can integrate an agent in NeoVim, I don’t do it. I want to use my editor solely for that purpose, while the rest (versioning, agentic coding, git client, etc.) is done in the terminal. My NeoVim setup is simple and fast, which is why I prefer it over any other IDE or editor. Especially with the native package manager in the latest version. I also replaced BBEdit by installing Neovide, a GUI version of NeoVim. It starts in a split second and is incredibly smooth and fast. And it’s so enjoyable to work with that I use it as my preferred frontend to Obsidian.
- pastel8739 5mo ago
  I must be missing something crucial in my obsidian setup. What is Obsidian without its frontend? For me it's just a bunch of markdown files.
giancarlostoro 5mo ago
Zed is probably the best text editor in the last 10 years. It has quirks, but it is insanely powerful and capable out of the box. I don't even bother trying to setup Neovim because of Zed. They let people for PRs for missing vim features for their vim emulation, and its insanely capable. I hope someday they get the funding they deserve, because it has insane potential. It's why I subscribe to their pay plan, even if I dont use it all the time, I want them to succeed.
- theappsecguy 5mo ago
  I do wish they'd focus on closing the gap to Jetbrains by implementing the QOL features that are missing. I understand they have to do what VC wants to see, but this agentic stuff is so tiring.
  - dalenw 5mo ago
    Agreed. It still feels like Zed is only good for writing scripts.
  - zackangelo 5mo ago
    I give them a try about twice a year. I write a lot of Rust which should be squarely in their wheelhouse. This last time I was pleasantly surprised to find they mostly fixed their SSH remote editing support. But then it started truncating rustc inline error messages and I couldn’t figure out how to view the whole thing easily. When you’re just trying to get something done little bits like this can add up quickly. Punted back to Cursor for now.
    - donmcronald 5mo ago
      I don't like the way remote editing works with plugins. IIRC, the remote agent pulls the plugins from the connecting client. I get why it's done like that, but I'd way rather have it go the opposite direction. I want a setup where I can have an immutable devcontainer with local copies of everything I need to develop 100% offline; dependencies, tools, etc.. Having my local editor pull plugins from a devcontainer for the project seems to make more sense to me. I didn't dig in too much. Maybe there's a way to make it work somehow.
tengbretson 5mo ago
I really want to like Zed, but for some reason the way it interfaces with the TypeScript language server is dog slow compared to VS Code and its derivatives.
- xpe 5mo ago
  I'll bet if you point out the issues where this is described and measured, you'll get some eyeballs.
- habosa 5mo ago
  Same. Zed is so fast it's shocking. But it was using 2-3x as much RAM as VSCode or Cursor with TypeScript and the language server crashed a lot. Given that work is a TypeScript monorepo, that was a dealbreaker for me.
- tecoholic 5mo ago
  Check the lsp servers that run when you are editing TS file. I noticed something like 5-6 when editing a TSX file. There was even tailwind thrown in for a good measure (the project has no tailwind). All that buttery smooth 120fps wasted on poor resource management when it comes to LSPs.
  - dkersten 5mo ago
    I noticed the same, I had to basically force disable the tailwind LSP in my config to stop it from running since I don’t use tailwind. Also I’ve noticed the rust LSP causes the Zed text editor to lag badly when there’s a lot of warnings. For an editor that claims to be focused on performance, I am disappointed that LSP issues can lag the editor.
cdrnsf 5mo ago
If Cursor is worth $60bn, how much is Zed worth?
thomastraum 5mo ago
Love Zed.
Frannky 5mo ago
I would love to unleash parallel agents, but I am still checking every single edit while enforcing minimal, stateless, modular code, and I have the AI check in with me before writing the next file. A lot of times, I find it has incredibly stupid ideas and tends to make the code very messy. I would love to figure out how to stop that from happening automatically. The upside of checking in on the code, though, is that I can come up with smart directions for the AI from both a product and tech perspective. This is especially helpful when the dumb suggestions add a lot of complexity. I think it's like when a product person asks for a new feature, or when a founder building their own product selects which feature is smarter to build and how.
- paulddraper 5mo ago
  > I would love to figure out how to stop that from happening automatically. AGENTS.md
  - jazzypants 5mo ago
    > AGENTS.md -- which will be ignored just often enough that you can never quite trust it.
    - theowaway213456 5mo ago
      Yup. No matter how much you tell it to keep things simple, modular, crisp, whatever, it generates tons of garbage much too often.
    - paulddraper 5mo ago
      And yet still less often than the average developer.
    - bigmadshoe 5mo ago
      Btw it may be obvious but afaik claude by default only reads CLAUDE.md and not AGENTS.md
  - Frannky 5mo ago
alvsilvao 5mo ago
This is great! I love Zed, but when I came across Superset I stopped using Zed. Maybe no I will go back to it
- alvsilvao 5mo ago
  actually not that great. it's not as intuitive as Superset. Also, I can't manage to get a Claude session in the terminal to become a thread
chickensong 5mo ago
[dead]
umeshunni 5mo ago
Does this work with ACP?
- maxbrunsfeld 5mo ago
  Yes
lazzlazzlazz 5mo ago
I like Zed but the defaults for tabs (CTRL+Tab and CTRL+Shift+Tab step you through some diabolical tab selector in what is allegedly (but not really) recency order instead of just left/right. It really made me question their sanity.
- monooso 5mo ago
  AFK right now, but IIRC there's a setting to control the ordering.
conqrr 5mo ago
Love Zed for my personal projects at home with Openrouter. But I cant use it at work as I'm forced to use claude code at work and find the VSCode+claude code combo better. I know zed has claudecode integration, but I found it to be very weak compared to zedagent+claudemodel. Has this improved?
- Petersipoi 5mo ago
  Do you mind sharing what your spend is like on Openrouter? I pay for the $200 Claude Code plan just so I never have to think about usage or feel like I'm paying per prompt. But I nearly max out my usage each week and I have no idea what that would cost me on Openrouter. I hear a lot of people are using MiniMax of Openrouter. Is that what you do?
  - chillfox 5mo ago
    From my observation, people who use the api either end up learning to be much more token efficient, or use a cheaper model. I have been using the API for the last 2 years, OpenRouter for personal projects and Claude API for work, most of it in zed, always on high thinking. For work I usually spend $25 if I use opus/sonnet all day, and for personal stuff I usually spend $2-$5 if I use sonnet for a full evening. But, I don’t think someone who’s used to not thinking about token cost and efficient use would get anywhere close to that low spending if they switched from a plan to the API.
dist-epoch 5mo ago
Zed might have a fighting chance against VS Code now that it's million extensions are quickly becoming irrelevant since agents do all the coding. What's needed today is a nice way to orchestrate agents and do some small manual edits there and there to the code.
ArielTM 5mo ago
The worktree part is the easy half. Running parallel Claude Code subagents, the bottleneck is never "can they run without stomping each other's files." That's solved the moment each one has its own checkout. The hard problem is architectural consistency. Agent A renames a type to X. Agent B, in a different worktree, independently renames the same type to Y because neither saw the other's decision. When you merge, neither worktree is "wrong" but the code is incoherent. You need either a shared decision log that every agent reads before starting, or an orchestrator that hands out scope narrow enough that no two agents can collide. Zed's post is solving filesystem-level parallelism. The harder coordination problem is semantic, and that's where time savings from parallelization go to die.
- techpulselab 5mo ago
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- ianhxu 5mo ago
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GangstaAgents 5mo ago
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aroido-bigcat 5mo ago
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jessedelira 5mo ago
I tried Zed and was really convinced that I could use it full-time, but the lack of extensions (TODO highlight, TabOut) + other QoL (line number goto as easy as VSCode + tab filter like another comment said). I also thought it was odd that I can't configure the font size in the git commit message editor. On recent additions, the dev container integration was great. Rooting for you Zed!
- samhh 5mo ago
  FYI there is now an extension for TODO highlighting. Not at my machine but it’s something like “comments highlighter”.
  - qn9n 5mo ago
    https://github.com/thedadams/zed-comment https://github.com/thedadams/zed-comment
    - jessedelira 5mo ago
      Thanks!
- whalesalad 5mo ago
  use zed agents to build the zed extensions you miss
hsaliak 5mo ago
I find parallel agents to be an exception rather than a norm. Maybe I’m the problem? For those exceptional cases, opening a few more terminals gets the job done. It’s unclear to me if this needs to be the primary workflow. My brain naturally does better on deep work on one problem..
- hedgehog 5mo ago
  I have historically not used them but I want to start so that some of the spin up / tear down work of doing any particular task can happen in isolation. For example, drafting a change before I start editing, checking out and setting up code from a branch before I do a review, etc.
- caterama 5mo ago
  I am exactly the same, except I am really excited about this update! It’s not so much “in parallel” but being able to easily jump between threads. It allows me to dive into misc investigations in a side thread without derailing some main context where I’m doing the main editing.
  - a012 5mo ago
    I also have this workflow, it’s like you’re on the side quests or on the main story; those are not necessarily in parallel
  - hsaliak 5mo ago
    I have a coding agent https://github.com/hsaliak/std_slop https://github.com/hsaliak/std_slop where the sessions are in SQL ledger. So /session [new, clone, deletes, undo] are supported and all sessions are persistent. Cloning lets you 'fork' the context and undo lets you roll back, basically solving the problem you state above. Sessions are linear though, so you cant do this _while_ an existing session is cooking. That said, I am excited about this update too, I've been playing with ACP support and Zed's UX was bare bones. I want to run my agent with multiple workers now, and see what happens.
whatsakandr 5mo ago
I gave zed agent another shot today, and it couldn't run bash commands, so back to opencode I go.
alanwreath 5mo ago
I wonder if you could use something like vLLM and have these subagents max out your local gpu. I’ve been looking for using a local model because I’m tired of rate limits of the cloud and also would really like to make use of my local gpu when I’m working (5090h even if it’s not on my computer I’m typing on.
saratogacx 5mo ago
I really want to like zed but it claims all over the place to be be built with native windows code but it's the only OS I can't use the OS title bar and this weird menubar that opens on hover? The claim really falls flat the moment you open it up and it is "native but not as you know it" providing the same UX experience of any other electron junk.
apatheticonion 5mo ago
And yet the file explorer still fails to update when the files actually change https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/30851 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/30851
aeneas_ory 5mo ago
What are parallel agents worth to professional engineers if reviewing the code is a pain (aka non existent) in Zed? Please add proper code review tools (compare with branch|file|revision) and GH pr review tools like IntelliJ!
- qn9n 5mo ago
  It has decent git tools, it has had so for a little while now https://zed.dev/docs/git https://zed.dev/docs/git
- imtringued 5mo ago
  Zed doesn't even let you jump to the code that the agent is trying to edit. You have to search for the code yourself. It's incredibly annoying.
lerp-io 5mo ago
tried using zed but when i use codex cli, when agent updates file, it doesn't even register in the "buffer" (why call it buffer? trying to be different?), i have to close the file and open it back up again for it to update the file contents which creates bugs where i edit some other thing in file and save (no "overwrite warning" which i get in vscode) it just overwrites the file....so the editor is just plain buggy.
aranw 5mo ago
The Parallel agents feature seems to be built around git worktrees or local projects. But I think local project mode defeats the point. In my day to day development workflow I've switched fully to jj and jj workspaces, so this isn't something I'll be using until Zed gets jj support. Also this change ended up with a reshuffled layout I didn't really expect and I can't really figure out how to revert it now
nixpulvis 5mo ago
The new default layout is exactly backwards of what I want. It should go: project tree | text editor | agent view | threads Not to mention on most laptops you'll only have room for about two panes at a time. So they should be focusing on pane management and making it easy to swap between views. Not highlighting 4 pane workflows. Unless you have an ultra-wide monitor, I'd rather have a separate Agents window. I use Zed a lot and this is a minor (can be configured) but telling design decision that really bothers me. How long until they decide editing itself isn't worth it anymore? Stop supporting VI mode?
- ubercore 5mo ago
  Yeah, first thing I did was change all the locations back. I really dislike the automatic layout change they pushed. Also, watching the change notes, most effort seems to be focused on agents this days, which is a bit worrying. I love Zed because it's great editor that also knows a bit about agents; I don't want it to continue pivoting towards pushing agent management deeper and deeper into the experience.
  - dayjah 5mo ago
    $VC disagrees w/ you on this. Unfortunately. Personally, I still pay Zed because I think they’re doing great foundational work. However I’ve now almost entirely migrated to helix for editing needs.
  - petcat 5mo ago
    > I don't want it to continue pivoting towards pushing agent management deeper and deeper into the experience. AI and agent tooling is the only way this VC-backed company is going to make any money. Nobody is going to pay for a text editor, so they've had no choice but to enshitify it by chasing AI features for the last year+.
  - nixpulvis 5mo ago
    I don't have any problem with them investing heavily in this, I just think they need to be smart about the UX and not let the business VC drive the experience this much. Pivoting from text editor to agent manager is a bad choice IMO, when it can easily be both and help people onboard from editor to agentic workflows.
jimmypk 5mo ago
[flagged]
alimbada 5mo ago
I'll just leave this here (again): https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604
VortexLain 5mo ago
I personally explicitly avoid parallel agents, since it creates too much cognitive debt, and sometimes an agent may need steering towards an architectally sane solution mid-work.
- aszen 5mo ago
  Same here. Reviewing gets harder too and multi tasking kills any kind of productivity if you need to review the code then. My approach these days is to do one change at a time, until I can fully merge it with confidence.
- bicepjai 5mo ago
  Totally agree, the more parallel agents you spawn the more the probability of you vibe coding rather than guide coding. There comes a point when my mind says just commit and move on, which I fight to not do it.
- willio58 5mo ago
  Agreed. With simple stuff it works. But then again with simple stuff it’s pretty fast to do it sequentially. With complex stuff I often have open the “thinking” output so I can stop/interrupt with guidance. Without that it’s often garbage output that I then have to work to fix, which is difficult to do while you’re also doing the same with a parallel process.
tankmohit11 5mo ago
Zed’s agent ui is the most confusing ui I have ever seen. Tiny and vague icons, clicking on ‘x’ sometimes closes the editor, sometimes an agent and sometimes a panel, hard to figure out what it will do. I wanted to try zed with new features but this unpredictable behaviour made me uninstall it. It also doesn’t support opencode Go which I am subscribed to.
maxothex 5mo ago
[dead]
artem_am 5mo ago
This is nicely solved for the single-machine case. What breaks is cross-machine: one local, one on a cloud VM, whatever. If any of them are behind NAT, HTTP stops working. Pilot Protocol handles that, persistent addresses, encrypted tunnels, no infra to configure. Might be relevant if Zed ever goes cross-machine with this.

279 points by ajeetdsouza 5mo ago

gigatexal 5mo ago

Becoming more and more useful by teh day. Love to see it.

orliesaurus 5mo ago

I just installed Zed last night and enabled vim mode, can't wait to try this!

testfrequency 5mo ago

Warp launched something similar a week or so ago, but the Zed implementation I find a lot more logical. Will give Zed another try, as I’m overdue for my monthly “maybe I should try this terminal/IDE” itch.

dmix 5mo ago
I like Warp but something about it is very opaque and confusing. Maybe it has a learning curve I haven't committed to, or it's just very alpha and evolving often.
- dewey 5mo ago
  Agreed, I exclusively use Warp for server maintenance and ssh'ing into servers, it does that better than Claude itself but the UI is always confusing, especially after their recent changes.

2001zhaozhao 5mo ago

It's pretty clear by this point that everyone is going towards parallel agents and worktrees, but TBH I am surprised to see an offering from Zed, seeing how heavy they lean into being editor-heavy and having AI features be strictly optional. The key advantages Zed has are being agent-agnostic (so not a first party UI like Claude/Codex/Cursor Desktop), supporting multiple repositories on the same agent via creating a worktree for each automatically, and having a high quality custom agent UI rather than wrapping over CLIs (I've used their IDE's agent UI in the past and it's great). AFAIK, this is the first mainstream tool that supports all of these features.

cpill 5mo ago
yeah, but they don't support a lot of the features Claude does like MCP integration. we've booked this up to logfire (telemetry provider) and it's a game changer when doing optimisation or diagnosis of bugs. plugins and skills also missing. but it is nice to switch between provider easily
- teaearlgraycold 5mo ago
  I’m using MCPs with Claude Code in the Zed UI
- logicprog 5mo ago
  The built in agent supports MCPs, as do the agents you can use through ACP that do already.
- somnium_sn 5mo ago
  Little historic sidenote: Zed was the first MCP client next to Claude Desktop
- marton78 5mo ago
  This is false. Zed does support skills and also MCP servers.

sync 5mo ago

I'm having a hard time adjusting to the Project Panel on the right (and, at least for me, hidden by default) - seems like they're trying to bury the concept of a 'file'? It's certainly interesting though, and I'll give it some time - the post says "It feels more natural once you've spent a little time with it"

KetoManx64 5mo ago
You can move it to the other side panel by right clicking the Project icon that toggles the view.
qn9n 5mo ago
I think it's more that you don't need to look at the actual tree structure all that often, especially when most codebases follow logical and conventionalised structures you remember these structures and can use Command-P to search for files individually to open and the tree structure becomes something you peek at infrequently to ensure that everything is going in it's right place.

jamie_ca 5mo ago

I'm buying into this workflow more the more I use it, but the real gamechanger is (a) parallel threads in worktrees, with (b) enough lifecycle hooks to treat them similarly to spinning up a VM. Specifically for me that means that after I create a worktree I get some local config files copied over and Postgres duplicating my local dev and test databases so I can test in isolation, and then when I close out a worktree it deletes those databases. The best at that that I've found is Conductor, but I can't use it at work because we only have Copilot and they're locked to a Claude/Codex backend. Arbor is close, but it's not under as active development and has a lot of rough edges. Opencode GUI has create hooks but not teardown. If Zed can hook that up _and_ also keep its great editor roots, that'll definitely be a game changer.

rtfeldman 5mo ago
> The best at that that I've found is Conductor, but I can't use it at work because we only have Copilot and they're locked to a Claude/Codex backend. FYI, you can use Copilot directly in Zed!
anthony-eid 5mo ago
We support create git worktree hooks too
- saturn_vk 5mo ago
  Is there an example of this?
  - jamie_ca 5mo ago
    The worktree create hook is documented https://zed.dev/docs/tasks?highlight=hook#hooks https://zed.dev/docs/tasks?highlight=hook#hooks And then I guess setting up tasks for the cleanup part, but it'd be great to see that get automated too so I don't need to remember it.
danelliot 5mo ago
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verse 5mo ago

I personally don't love the idea of the default layout pushing aside my code and filetree to make space for AI tools I really like Zed, I use it every day. But, if I'd seen this layout when I first installed, I never would have taken it seriously I imagine this will push some new users away

ellieh 5mo ago
> I imagine this will push some new users away I suspect it will gain them more users than it will lose Most other tools doing this are heavy, buggy, and built on electron
- verse 5mo ago
  Fair point, the existing tools probably suck. They'll definitely lose me though if the whole plan is to turn this into Codex running on GPUI.
mjrpes 5mo ago
Luckily it's very easy to change, although a bit unintuitive for new users. You right-click the small icon for each type of panel in the bottom bar, and select where you want it to be docked. Left click toggles the panel into view.
xpe 5mo ago
This was also my first impression. But it seems to me the changes are mostly about swapping what panels dock where (left or right) and maybe some additions/tweaks around the AI panels. On macOS these are still the same: ⌘B : toggle the left dock ⌘R : toggle the right dock If you opt-in to the new layout, the panels that used to sit in the left dock are now in the right dock. I will give it a try even for classic coding. One can change what panels get docked where from the settings window.
brikym 5mo ago
It will also pull more users in. I don't want to be looking at code. I want more of a codex style app where it's easy to shove all my projects in one place and context switch endlessly.

subarctic 5mo ago

I liked the idea of the new layout with the agent thread on the left, it goes hand-in-hand with having multiple threads that are easy to switch between and running concurrently, but I switched back because my file tree disappeared and I couldn't easily see how to add it back

maxbrunsfeld 5mo ago
In the new layout, the project panel and git panel are just moved to the right side, so that the agent panel could be on the left, and you could still view both at the same time.

jotato 5mo ago

Yesterday, I determined to move to Zed because they weren't pushing this stuff :(

tailscaler2026 5mo ago
zed's got about 60 billion reasons to add an agent panel
rtfeldman 5mo ago
You can disable all AI features in Zed with a single setting: https://zed.dev/blog/disable-ai-features https://zed.dev/blog/disable-ai-features
- throwatdem12311 5mo ago
  It doesn’t mean the bulk of their effort isn’t going to AI slopshit.
  - indra_varta 5mo ago
    I disagree. All their "AI slopshit" features are useful, and the fact that you can just.. turn them off and get a great editor regardless is what I like about it.
  - KetoManx64 5mo ago
    As compared to the slopshit that you'd rather have them working on to fit your personal needs?
  - nsonha 5mo ago
    so what should they do instead? reinventing the editor? ...wait they did that already.
Groxx 5mo ago
Zed was one of the very-early editors to jump on adding AI. Might want to look elsewhere.
5mo ago

xiej 5mo ago

Funny how Zed's tagline is Love your editor again Zed is a minimal code editor crafted for speed and collaboration with humans and AI. At home, I don't use any AI when coding, to keep my brain sharp. But it's clear that Zed's focus is on AI integration because that's where the money's going (seriously, where is the setting to have a different ui icon size vs ui font size). Is there any editor still being being developed and focusing on the experience of coding by hand?

taude 5mo ago
Emacs. ;)
- mplanchard 5mo ago
  100%. I recently got rid of my lsp-booster and similar kludges because the builtin language server client (eglot) is now fast enough without it, even on large projects. And if you want AI integration at your choice and control, agent-shell (and chatgpt-shell, which is LLM-agnostic despite the name) are great packages. They’re totally hackable with elisp like you’d expect, which I personally haven’t done a ton with, because I use AI pretty sparingly, but I imagine the crowd here could come up with plenty of ideas for how to program your editor and your agent interface together.
modernerd 5mo ago
> seriously, where is the setting to have a different ui size vs ui font size Search for font size in preferences. You'll see a 'font size' under 'buffer' (editor), under 'UI Font', and under 'Agent Panel' to let you control font sizes in all of those places independently. > Is there any editor still being being developed and focusing on the experience of coding by hand? Zed lets you hand-edit too! It's fast and decent. vim, neovim, Emacs, Helix, and JetBrains products continue to do that well too. There are still more traditional IDEs/editors than pure AI ones. You can also toggle AI features off in Zed from preferences if you want to.
- xiej 5mo ago
  ah I forgot a word, I meant the ui icon size. If I bump up the ui font size so that I can distinguish the icons apart on my large monitor, the ui text becomes comically large. I do use Zed without AI features, it's just a bit of a disappointment (though understandable) since it was originally marketed as just a nice speedy editor.

fishgoesblub 5mo ago

I remember when Zed's main thing was "collaborative" editing. Not as profitable as AI I suppose.

danielvaughn 5mo ago

What I want is a stateful file-writing layer that is aware of all clients (aka agents and humans) and their activity. It provides its own locking mechanisms, and prevents agents from overwriting each others work. That way you could have multiple agents operating on the same codebase, without having to futz with worktrees and all that.

agdexai 5mo ago
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lfx 5mo ago

I loved zed for over 1 year, told for everybody to use it, because it was so fast and great. But now using claude-code,gemini-cli,codex,etc it just seems less relevant. Just opened nvim with lazyvim and it feels nice, since I'm in terminal anyway it just feels more natural. Still have zed opened, still like it but I guess honeymoon is over.

sieabahlpark 5mo ago
[dead]

gaigalas 5mo ago

I've been a Sublime Text user for years, then a VSCode for years. Been trying Zed for the past couple weeks and it has been a good experience.

gherkinnn 5mo ago

I've used Zed since the very beginning and I remain a fan. Its LLM integration so far has been a lot more pleasant than what I see in others and the editor is perfectly usable without using LLMs. Its multi buffer and speed sound trivial but using anything else feels wrong now.

submeta 5mo ago

Is this any different from a setup where I use a terminal with tabs and splits, running my favorite editor in one or more panes, and several agents (Claude Code and Codex) in several other panes and tabs? Edit: Although I can integrate an agent in NeoVim, I don’t do it. I want to use my editor solely for that purpose, while the rest (versioning, agentic coding, git client, etc.) is done in the terminal. My NeoVim setup is simple and fast, which is why I prefer it over any other IDE or editor. Especially with the native package manager in the latest version. I also replaced BBEdit by installing Neovide, a GUI version of NeoVim. It starts in a split second and is incredibly smooth and fast. And it’s so enjoyable to work with that I use it as my preferred frontend to Obsidian.

pastel8739 5mo ago
I must be missing something crucial in my obsidian setup. What is Obsidian without its frontend? For me it's just a bunch of markdown files.

giancarlostoro 5mo ago

Zed is probably the best text editor in the last 10 years. It has quirks, but it is insanely powerful and capable out of the box. I don't even bother trying to setup Neovim because of Zed. They let people for PRs for missing vim features for their vim emulation, and its insanely capable. I hope someday they get the funding they deserve, because it has insane potential. It's why I subscribe to their pay plan, even if I dont use it all the time, I want them to succeed.

theappsecguy 5mo ago
I do wish they'd focus on closing the gap to Jetbrains by implementing the QOL features that are missing. I understand they have to do what VC wants to see, but this agentic stuff is so tiring.
- dalenw 5mo ago
  Agreed. It still feels like Zed is only good for writing scripts.
- zackangelo 5mo ago
  I give them a try about twice a year. I write a lot of Rust which should be squarely in their wheelhouse. This last time I was pleasantly surprised to find they mostly fixed their SSH remote editing support. But then it started truncating rustc inline error messages and I couldn’t figure out how to view the whole thing easily. When you’re just trying to get something done little bits like this can add up quickly. Punted back to Cursor for now.
  - donmcronald 5mo ago
    I don't like the way remote editing works with plugins. IIRC, the remote agent pulls the plugins from the connecting client. I get why it's done like that, but I'd way rather have it go the opposite direction. I want a setup where I can have an immutable devcontainer with local copies of everything I need to develop 100% offline; dependencies, tools, etc.. Having my local editor pull plugins from a devcontainer for the project seems to make more sense to me. I didn't dig in too much. Maybe there's a way to make it work somehow.

tengbretson 5mo ago

I really want to like Zed, but for some reason the way it interfaces with the TypeScript language server is dog slow compared to VS Code and its derivatives.

xpe 5mo ago
I'll bet if you point out the issues where this is described and measured, you'll get some eyeballs.
habosa 5mo ago
Same. Zed is so fast it's shocking. But it was using 2-3x as much RAM as VSCode or Cursor with TypeScript and the language server crashed a lot. Given that work is a TypeScript monorepo, that was a dealbreaker for me.
tecoholic 5mo ago
Check the lsp servers that run when you are editing TS file. I noticed something like 5-6 when editing a TSX file. There was even tailwind thrown in for a good measure (the project has no tailwind). All that buttery smooth 120fps wasted on poor resource management when it comes to LSPs.
- dkersten 5mo ago
  I noticed the same, I had to basically force disable the tailwind LSP in my config to stop it from running since I don’t use tailwind. Also I’ve noticed the rust LSP causes the Zed text editor to lag badly when there’s a lot of warnings. For an editor that claims to be focused on performance, I am disappointed that LSP issues can lag the editor.

cdrnsf 5mo ago

If Cursor is worth $60bn, how much is Zed worth?

thomastraum 5mo ago

Love Zed.

Frannky 5mo ago

I would love to unleash parallel agents, but I am still checking every single edit while enforcing minimal, stateless, modular code, and I have the AI check in with me before writing the next file. A lot of times, I find it has incredibly stupid ideas and tends to make the code very messy. I would love to figure out how to stop that from happening automatically. The upside of checking in on the code, though, is that I can come up with smart directions for the AI from both a product and tech perspective. This is especially helpful when the dumb suggestions add a lot of complexity. I think it's like when a product person asks for a new feature, or when a founder building their own product selects which feature is smarter to build and how.

paulddraper 5mo ago
> I would love to figure out how to stop that from happening automatically. AGENTS.md
- jazzypants 5mo ago
  > AGENTS.md -- which will be ignored just often enough that you can never quite trust it.
  - theowaway213456 5mo ago
    Yup. No matter how much you tell it to keep things simple, modular, crisp, whatever, it generates tons of garbage much too often.
  - paulddraper 5mo ago
    And yet still less often than the average developer.
  - bigmadshoe 5mo ago
    Btw it may be obvious but afaik claude by default only reads CLAUDE.md and not AGENTS.md
- Frannky 5mo ago

alvsilvao 5mo ago

This is great! I love Zed, but when I came across Superset I stopped using Zed. Maybe no I will go back to it

alvsilvao 5mo ago
actually not that great. it's not as intuitive as Superset. Also, I can't manage to get a Claude session in the terminal to become a thread

chickensong 5mo ago

[dead]

umeshunni 5mo ago

Does this work with ACP?

maxbrunsfeld 5mo ago
Yes

lazzlazzlazz 5mo ago

I like Zed but the defaults for tabs (CTRL+Tab and CTRL+Shift+Tab step you through some diabolical tab selector in what is allegedly (but not really) recency order instead of just left/right. It really made me question their sanity.

monooso 5mo ago
AFK right now, but IIRC there's a setting to control the ordering.

conqrr 5mo ago

Love Zed for my personal projects at home with Openrouter. But I cant use it at work as I'm forced to use claude code at work and find the VSCode+claude code combo better. I know zed has claudecode integration, but I found it to be very weak compared to zedagent+claudemodel. Has this improved?

Petersipoi 5mo ago
Do you mind sharing what your spend is like on Openrouter? I pay for the $200 Claude Code plan just so I never have to think about usage or feel like I'm paying per prompt. But I nearly max out my usage each week and I have no idea what that would cost me on Openrouter. I hear a lot of people are using MiniMax of Openrouter. Is that what you do?
- chillfox 5mo ago
  From my observation, people who use the api either end up learning to be much more token efficient, or use a cheaper model. I have been using the API for the last 2 years, OpenRouter for personal projects and Claude API for work, most of it in zed, always on high thinking. For work I usually spend $25 if I use opus/sonnet all day, and for personal stuff I usually spend $2-$5 if I use sonnet for a full evening. But, I don’t think someone who’s used to not thinking about token cost and efficient use would get anywhere close to that low spending if they switched from a plan to the API.

dist-epoch 5mo ago

Zed might have a fighting chance against VS Code now that it's million extensions are quickly becoming irrelevant since agents do all the coding. What's needed today is a nice way to orchestrate agents and do some small manual edits there and there to the code.

ArielTM 5mo ago

The worktree part is the easy half. Running parallel Claude Code subagents, the bottleneck is never "can they run without stomping each other's files." That's solved the moment each one has its own checkout. The hard problem is architectural consistency. Agent A renames a type to X. Agent B, in a different worktree, independently renames the same type to Y because neither saw the other's decision. When you merge, neither worktree is "wrong" but the code is incoherent. You need either a shared decision log that every agent reads before starting, or an orchestrator that hands out scope narrow enough that no two agents can collide. Zed's post is solving filesystem-level parallelism. The harder coordination problem is semantic, and that's where time savings from parallelization go to die.

techpulselab 5mo ago
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ianhxu 5mo ago
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GangstaAgents 5mo ago

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aroido-bigcat 5mo ago

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jessedelira 5mo ago

I tried Zed and was really convinced that I could use it full-time, but the lack of extensions (TODO highlight, TabOut) + other QoL (line number goto as easy as VSCode + tab filter like another comment said). I also thought it was odd that I can't configure the font size in the git commit message editor. On recent additions, the dev container integration was great. Rooting for you Zed!

samhh 5mo ago
FYI there is now an extension for TODO highlighting. Not at my machine but it’s something like “comments highlighter”.
- qn9n 5mo ago
  https://github.com/thedadams/zed-comment https://github.com/thedadams/zed-comment
  - jessedelira 5mo ago
    Thanks!
whalesalad 5mo ago
use zed agents to build the zed extensions you miss

hsaliak 5mo ago

I find parallel agents to be an exception rather than a norm. Maybe I’m the problem? For those exceptional cases, opening a few more terminals gets the job done. It’s unclear to me if this needs to be the primary workflow. My brain naturally does better on deep work on one problem..

hedgehog 5mo ago
I have historically not used them but I want to start so that some of the spin up / tear down work of doing any particular task can happen in isolation. For example, drafting a change before I start editing, checking out and setting up code from a branch before I do a review, etc.
caterama 5mo ago
I am exactly the same, except I am really excited about this update! It’s not so much “in parallel” but being able to easily jump between threads. It allows me to dive into misc investigations in a side thread without derailing some main context where I’m doing the main editing.
- a012 5mo ago
  I also have this workflow, it’s like you’re on the side quests or on the main story; those are not necessarily in parallel
- hsaliak 5mo ago
  I have a coding agent https://github.com/hsaliak/std_slop https://github.com/hsaliak/std_slop where the sessions are in SQL ledger. So /session [new, clone, deletes, undo] are supported and all sessions are persistent. Cloning lets you 'fork' the context and undo lets you roll back, basically solving the problem you state above. Sessions are linear though, so you cant do this _while_ an existing session is cooking. That said, I am excited about this update too, I've been playing with ACP support and Zed's UX was bare bones. I want to run my agent with multiple workers now, and see what happens.

whatsakandr 5mo ago

I gave zed agent another shot today, and it couldn't run bash commands, so back to opencode I go.

alanwreath 5mo ago

I wonder if you could use something like vLLM and have these subagents max out your local gpu. I’ve been looking for using a local model because I’m tired of rate limits of the cloud and also would really like to make use of my local gpu when I’m working (5090h even if it’s not on my computer I’m typing on.

saratogacx 5mo ago

I really want to like zed but it claims all over the place to be be built with native windows code but it's the only OS I can't use the OS title bar and this weird menubar that opens on hover? The claim really falls flat the moment you open it up and it is "native but not as you know it" providing the same UX experience of any other electron junk.

apatheticonion 5mo ago

And yet the file explorer still fails to update when the files actually change https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/30851 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/30851

aeneas_ory 5mo ago

What are parallel agents worth to professional engineers if reviewing the code is a pain (aka non existent) in Zed? Please add proper code review tools (compare with branch|file|revision) and GH pr review tools like IntelliJ!

qn9n 5mo ago
It has decent git tools, it has had so for a little while now https://zed.dev/docs/git https://zed.dev/docs/git
imtringued 5mo ago
Zed doesn't even let you jump to the code that the agent is trying to edit. You have to search for the code yourself. It's incredibly annoying.

lerp-io 5mo ago

tried using zed but when i use codex cli, when agent updates file, it doesn't even register in the "buffer" (why call it buffer? trying to be different?), i have to close the file and open it back up again for it to update the file contents which creates bugs where i edit some other thing in file and save (no "overwrite warning" which i get in vscode) it just overwrites the file....so the editor is just plain buggy.

aranw 5mo ago

The Parallel agents feature seems to be built around git worktrees or local projects. But I think local project mode defeats the point. In my day to day development workflow I've switched fully to jj and jj workspaces, so this isn't something I'll be using until Zed gets jj support. Also this change ended up with a reshuffled layout I didn't really expect and I can't really figure out how to revert it now

nixpulvis 5mo ago

The new default layout is exactly backwards of what I want. It should go: project tree | text editor | agent view | threads Not to mention on most laptops you'll only have room for about two panes at a time. So they should be focusing on pane management and making it easy to swap between views. Not highlighting 4 pane workflows. Unless you have an ultra-wide monitor, I'd rather have a separate Agents window. I use Zed a lot and this is a minor (can be configured) but telling design decision that really bothers me. How long until they decide editing itself isn't worth it anymore? Stop supporting VI mode?

ubercore 5mo ago
Yeah, first thing I did was change all the locations back. I really dislike the automatic layout change they pushed. Also, watching the change notes, most effort seems to be focused on agents this days, which is a bit worrying. I love Zed because it's great editor that also knows a bit about agents; I don't want it to continue pivoting towards pushing agent management deeper and deeper into the experience.
- dayjah 5mo ago
  $VC disagrees w/ you on this. Unfortunately. Personally, I still pay Zed because I think they’re doing great foundational work. However I’ve now almost entirely migrated to helix for editing needs.
- petcat 5mo ago
  > I don't want it to continue pivoting towards pushing agent management deeper and deeper into the experience. AI and agent tooling is the only way this VC-backed company is going to make any money. Nobody is going to pay for a text editor, so they've had no choice but to enshitify it by chasing AI features for the last year+.
- nixpulvis 5mo ago
  I don't have any problem with them investing heavily in this, I just think they need to be smart about the UX and not let the business VC drive the experience this much. Pivoting from text editor to agent manager is a bad choice IMO, when it can easily be both and help people onboard from editor to agentic workflows.

jimmypk 5mo ago

[flagged]

alimbada 5mo ago

I'll just leave this here (again): https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604

VortexLain 5mo ago

I personally explicitly avoid parallel agents, since it creates too much cognitive debt, and sometimes an agent may need steering towards an architectally sane solution mid-work.

aszen 5mo ago
Same here. Reviewing gets harder too and multi tasking kills any kind of productivity if you need to review the code then. My approach these days is to do one change at a time, until I can fully merge it with confidence.
bicepjai 5mo ago
Totally agree, the more parallel agents you spawn the more the probability of you vibe coding rather than guide coding. There comes a point when my mind says just commit and move on, which I fight to not do it.
willio58 5mo ago
Agreed. With simple stuff it works. But then again with simple stuff it’s pretty fast to do it sequentially. With complex stuff I often have open the “thinking” output so I can stop/interrupt with guidance. Without that it’s often garbage output that I then have to work to fix, which is difficult to do while you’re also doing the same with a parallel process.

tankmohit11 5mo ago

Zed’s agent ui is the most confusing ui I have ever seen. Tiny and vague icons, clicking on ‘x’ sometimes closes the editor, sometimes an agent and sometimes a panel, hard to figure out what it will do. I wanted to try zed with new features but this unpredictable behaviour made me uninstall it. It also doesn’t support opencode Go which I am subscribed to.

maxothex 5mo ago

[dead]

artem_am 5mo ago

This is nicely solved for the single-machine case. What breaks is cross-machine: one local, one on a cloud VM, whatever. If any of them are behind NAT, HTTP stops working. Pilot Protocol handles that, persistent addresses, encrypted tunnels, no infra to configure. Might be relevant if Zed ever goes cross-machine with this.