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Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

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Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#301

Post by vunderba »

bbkane wrote: post #294
random3 wrote: post #292

I wanted Zed to work as a high performance dev-enabled Markdown editor as I was looking to replace Obsidian that doesn't scale well (memory use and cursor latency degrades with document size, and generally what I suspect is a weak foundation). My use case is active note taking(PKM) and reviewing including a few large (1-2+ MB) markdown files. However, to my surprise, the performance for Markdown was much worse - it's…

The thing I really need from my markdown editor is pasting images that then show inline, so I don't have to waste screen space with a "preview pane". So far the only editor I've found that does this is Typora.

+1 for Typora. It also has a nice option to automatically copy any media that is pasted into a doc into a $doc.assets subfolder so you can keep everything organized.

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#302

Post by dtkav »

random3 wrote: post #292

I wanted Zed to work as a high performance dev-enabled Markdown editor as I was looking to replace Obsidian that doesn't scale well (memory use and cursor latency degrades with document size, and generally what I suspect is a weak foundation). My use case is active note taking(PKM) and reviewing including a few large (1-2+ MB) markdown files. However, to my surprise, the performance for Markdown was much worse - it's…

> On this note, I think there's room for an open source pluggable PKM as an alternative to Obsidian and think Zed is a great candidate. Unfortunately I don't have time to build it myself just yet.

I'm also super interested in building this. OTOH Obsidian has a huge advantage for its plugin ecosystem because it is just so hackable.

One of the creators of Zed talked about their experience building Atom - at the time the plugin API was just wide open (which resulted in a ton of cool stuff, but also made it harder to keep building). They've taken a much stricter Plugin API approach in Zed vs. Atom, but I think the former approach is working out well for Obsidian's plugin ecosystem.

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#303

Post by dtkav »

xpe wrote: post #278
SafeDusk wrote: post #84

Tried Zed and Cursor, but they always felt too magical to me. I ended up building a minimal agent framework that only uses seven tools (even for code edits): read, write, diff, browse, command, ask, and think. These simple, composable tools can be utilized well enough by increasingly powerful LLM(s), especially Gemini 2.5 pro to achieve most tasks in a consistent, understandable way. More importantly - I can just swi…

Zed and Cursor are very different; I wouldn’t put them in the same bucket myself. I’ve been using the Zed AI assistant panel for a while (manual control over the context window by including files and diagnostics) — will try the new agentic panel soon.

Unfortunately the new agent panel completely nerfs the old workflow. I also love the old version (now called "Text Threads") for its transparency.

Even though they brought back text threads, the context is no longer included (or include-able!) as context in the inline assist. That means that you can no longer select code, hit ctrl+enter, and type "use the new code" or whatever.

I wish there was a way to just disable the agent panel entirely. I'm so uninterested in magical shit like cursor (though claude code is tasteful IMO).

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#304

Post by eikenberry »

divan wrote: post #22

Meanwhile I'm checking Helix editor every 6 month to see if authors became any less hostile to the idea of thinking about considering of starting thinking about potentially adding copilot support. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/4037

This seems more in scope of those same people who want to make their editor into an IDE. And just like most other things, the editor is a poor integration point for AI. The shell and inter-process communications are the gold standard for integration and are where the best integrations emerging from. Things that work with your editor instead of trying to replace it. Aider being the best example I've seen so far... though I'd love to hear about others.

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#305

Post by [deleted] »

maxbrunsfeld wrote: post #288
freehorse wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem, and thanks for the response here! I sent two feedback threads (added a second test where a file succeeded to edit and the rest failed). It was actually quite entertaining seeing the model try troubleshoot stuff anyway. I used github copilot's sonnet 3.7. I now tried copilot's sonnet 3.5 and it seems to work, so it was prob a 3.7 issue? It did not let me try zed's sonnets, so I don't know if there is a pro…

Thanks for the information. We can reproduce this using Copilot Chat. We're fixing now. We'll let you know when the fix is out.

[deleted]

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#306

Post by maxbrunsfeld »

freehorse wrote: post #218
rtfeldman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zed employee here - that sounds like a bug, sorry about that! If you're okay sharing the conversation with us, would you mind pressing the thumbs-down button at the bottom of the thread so that we can see what input led to the 400? (We can't see the contents of the thread unless you opt into sharing it with the thumbs-down button.)

No problem, and thanks for the response here! I sent two feedback threads (added a second test where a file succeeded to edit and the rest failed). It was actually quite entertaining seeing the model try troubleshoot stuff anyway. I used github copilot's sonnet 3.7. I now tried copilot's sonnet 3.5 and it seems to work, so it was prob a 3.7 issue? It did not let me try zed's sonnets, so I don't know if there is a pro…

I believe this PR fixes the issue: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/30178.

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#307

Post by dtkav »

freehorse wrote: post #119
senko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got fed up with the entire AI panel being an editable area, so sometimes I ended up clobbering it. They fixed that with the new agent panel, which now works more like the other AI sidebars. I was (mildly) annoyed by that too. The new UI still has rough edges but I like the change.

Interesting. I actually like the editable format of the chat interface because it allows fixing small stuff on the fly (instead of having to talk about it with the model) and de-cluttering the chat after a few back and forths make it a mess (instead of having to start anew), which makes the context window smaller and less confusing to the model, esp for local ones. Also, the editable form makes more sense to me, and…

Yes! Editing the whole buffer is a major feature because the more you keep around failed attempts and trash the dumber the model gets (and more expensive).

If you're working on stuff like marketing websites that are well represented in the model dataset then things will just fly, but if you're building something that is more niche it can be super important to tune the context -- in some cases this is the differentiating feature between being able to use AI assistance at all (otherwise the failure rate just goes to 100%).

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#308

Post by gunalx »

Like iy way more than the old one. (really didnt like how i couldnt just copy code blocks in one click) The new one seems interresting but useless without the agentic toolcalling, witch seems to be unsupported by most (even tool capable models like o4-mini or gemini2.5-pro. I would like to be able to supply debug info like before, as well as importing regular text threads into the context.

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#309

Post by dtkav »

ntonozzi wrote: post #205
freehorse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I actually like the editable format of the chat interface because it allows fixing small stuff on the fly (instead of having to talk about it with the model) and de-cluttering the chat after a few back and forths make it a mess (instead of having to start anew), which makes the context window smaller and less confusing to the model, esp for local ones. Also, the editable form makes more sense to me, and…

The old panel still exists, they call it a text thread.

Yeah, but text threads cannot be used as context in the inline assist right now so there's no way to apply the code.

Re: Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor

#310

Post by moltar »

bbkane wrote: post #294
random3 wrote: post #292

I wanted Zed to work as a high performance dev-enabled Markdown editor as I was looking to replace Obsidian that doesn't scale well (memory use and cursor latency degrades with document size, and generally what I suspect is a weak foundation). My use case is active note taking(PKM) and reviewing including a few large (1-2+ MB) markdown files. However, to my surprise, the performance for Markdown was much worse - it's…

The thing I really need from my markdown editor is pasting images that then show inline, so I don't have to waste screen space with a "preview pane". So far the only editor I've found that does this is Typora.

Bear if you are on a Mac
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