Zed
Also known as: zed editor, zed.dev
Zed was built by the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter (two influential developer tools) as a response to the perceived bloat of Electron-based editors like VS Code. Written in Rust, it renders at 120fps and handles large codebases without the slowdown developers often feel in heavier IDEs. That performance-first philosophy is what draws its early adopter community.
On the AI side, Zed takes a composable rather than bundled approach. Instead of building its own proprietary agent experience, it lets you bring agents in via ACP (Agent Communication Protocol, its open standard for connecting external agents) or MCP servers. You can run Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode alongside its own editor features. Diffs are reviewable before committing, and multiple agents can run in the same window.
Experienced builders often describe Zed as an 'agent cockpit': fast, ergonomic, and composable rather than a turnkey AI product. It is open source, which matters to teams with security review requirements. Its main tradeoff versus Cursor or Windsurf is that the AI workflow experience requires more manual assembly.