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..
Parallel agents in Zed
101–110 of 178 posts
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#102I'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…
Love to hear it! (Conductor founder here).
This is helpful to know - we're working on adding more agents, Copilot and OpenCode harnesses are among the most popular requests.
We also recently built an escape hatch. If you turn on Settings → Experimental → Big Terminal Mode you can create new terminals in the center panel (with ⌘⇧T) and use any agent you'd like (Copilot, OpenCode, etc). It isn't the best experience because you don't get notifications etc (yet), but at least it lets you use the harness you'd like until we build out the first-class UI for it.
Send me feedback anytime, I'm charlie@conductor.build.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#103I gave zed agent another shot today, and it couldn't run bash commands, so back to opencode I go.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#104I 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..
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.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#105I'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…
Love to hear it! (Conductor founder here). This is helpful to know - we're working on adding more agents, Copilot and OpenCode harnesses are among the most popular requests. We also recently built an escape hatch. If you turn on Settings → Experimental → Big Terminal Mode you can create new terminals in the center panel (with ⌘⇧T) and use any agent you'd like (Copilot, OpenCode, etc). It isn't the best experience bec…
I was an early user of conductor and used it a lot (like from maybe oct to Jan). But then there was some bug where maybe it wouldn’t release file descriptors or something where my laptop needed to be rebooted twice a day. So I stopped using it months ago.
But I’ve tried to reinstall it since and it just gets stuck in a weird infinite loop.
I liked conductor though. Hope you are able to fix those bugs and I can try again in a few weeks.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#106I 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..
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.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#107It'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…
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
I’m using MCPs with Claude Code in the Zed UI
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#108Zed 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 give them props for writing a truly responsive editor that's easy to use, and can switch to keybinding sets from other editors. (So you don't have to learn new ones) And I find it works more naturally for multi-file projects than VsCode, and Sublime.
In terms of in-line instantaneous error highlighting, introspection, refactoring, and autocomplete, it's not on the same level as JetBrains.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#109Warp 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.
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.
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.
Re: Parallel agents in Zed
#110It'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…
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
The built in agent supports MCPs, as do the agents you can use through ACP that do already.