Looks like a great feature/product/functionality. I hope that Zed editor will make it work with LLMs/agents that run in the terminal, not just the Zen Agent itself. Is it even possible? I use OMP.sh agent running in Zed terminal.
FYI: I've had success with changing the file_scan_inclusions setting which forces the file watcher to rescan all projects. Doesn't work consistently unfortunately, but easier than restarting.
Because the way we code has completely changed, and there is plenty of room for innovation.
I am convinced that the conversation is the primary artifact produce while coding, which is not a common/popular opinion. Still, i love to see someone pushing forward on this.
Adding onto this I and many others have asked for a ui extension API to actually make use of AI tools and they've adamantly refused. Until someone else with the time and resources to fork and maintain it comes along, it's just in maintenance mode. These "AI" features are not useful at all.
They aren't proposing to replace git though. They are just attempting to make it simpler for developers to follow changes applied by an LLM in an ergonomic fashion. Not saying it will work well but I'm happy to see someone trying a new approach here.
But Zed has taken a shit ton of VC money, so Zed needs to grow exponentially. So, Zed needs to make stuff that they shove down their customer's throats and can make more money with. Therefore, Zed can't justify just focussing on the basics. This makes me zad.
I’m not saying zed necessarily should be the one to do this, but in regards to "why not git, jj.."; if we don’t explore the fringes, how do we know if we are at local or global optimum with current solutions?
If I understand correctly, something like DeltaDB has always been part of the plan. Zed is a moonshot to reimagine collaborative development from the ground up. The editor, developer communication, the way changes are tracked, everything.
We deal with it, but even with options like jj, it always feels like you're settling. Git works, and we are familiar with it, but is it much more than that? Our baseline expectation should be higher.
I disagree. JetBrains PyCharm has a similar "local history" feature that solves this very real and existing problem and has saved my ass more than once when accidentally overwriting changes before committing or fubar'ing a git reset.
1. Commits are really just manual checkpoints while you’re working. Why not automatically checkpoint everything so you can actually go back to an older implementation without needing to remember to commit it?
2. Agentic workflows are so deeply single player. It’s very annoying, I want to collaborate with my team with agents, not review the output of one dev’s agent which they’ll just shove back into their existing agent.
i think a system that uses git and file system artifacts (txt/md/xml files whatever preference) is much better. eng teams need to define their artifacts, eg plan file, reqs etc whatever is needed and important to that team. the agent convo itself doesn’t add much value IMO and adds unnecessary bloat.
Maybe I’m pessimistic, but I think this just gives micro-managers the data they need to micro-manage you. It invites people to scrutinize the process, instead of the results.
Not once have I wished to review a colleague’s conversation with an AI. I want to review finished work.
I look at this and I can only imagine layoffs being justified with “bad prompt quality”. An incident retrospective broadcasting your agent conversations to the entire company, with people speculating where you should have put the “make no mistakes”.
It’s a shame, really, because I like Zed as an editor, but I can’t bring myself to support them if this is the direction they’re choosing.
Jujutsu already does this. I had agent screwing up changeset over couple hour long session and it took one shell command to split on pieces with longer pause.
The only downside is that because of Jujutsu snapshots it can't be used inside sandbox (since all jj commands are mutating)
this looks like jetbrains "local changes" but globally synced. "for the agents" mights scare people who jump to think about micromanagers, but these people mostly hide or fake work. even micromanagers will eventually give you an agent to use so it won't matter what is in the change log, what matters is speed+quality. and since you can iterate from any branch you have inginite try and retry possibilities
Why develop this when the core editor is almost unusable? On Linux wayland, copypaste is broken, the file manager is laggy and snippets do not trigger before the heavy hint logic is done. This is just on top of my head, the list is long
I've been using this "almost unusable" editor daily on both Linux and Mac for the past year and now experience no issues. while I still have JetBrains I haven't used it at all in at least six months.
Thankfully it's been working well for me when i use it, which tbh hasn't been that much lately since I'm getting an agent to write code for me more and more.
One thing they need to add is a way to double click on file names in agent output to navigate to it. It works in the bottom terminal but not the agent terminal panes or built in agents
I'm on macOS, but the core editor is far from unusable. I think it's unfair to call it that.
Zed is my daily driver and I'm pretty happy with it. I often switch over to other editors to do things Zed can't, but it's rarer than you'd think and really isn't that much of a hassle.
Can't relate (Fedora 44 GNOME with Wayland, AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO w/ Radeon 860M), binary install (no Flatpak). Using Zed as daily driver since ~4 Months, never had such problems.
This feels very useful for training agents but almost completely useless to humans? Do I really want to go back to every change I made? Whatuse would that be?
Snapshots have an intention behind them as a chunk that the programmer thought of. It has infinite flexibility depending on the programmer/team. IMO they are a necessary feature, but the article considers it a bug. It’s an explicit and deliberate chunking of code writing process which is what you want in a chaotic “collaborative” environment. The system doesn’t get to decide but you decide when to commit.
I had the great pleasure/misfortune of being forced to work with LaminDB, and I can tell you folks; data provenance isn't going away -- it will be used to train the very AI models snapping at our heels
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadhttps://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/54150 failing to show newly created files and declining to provide a refresh button, instead adding a polling backend, breaks Zed on WSL.
Why a new version control system? Why not git, jj, or another existing system?
I am convinced that the conversation is the primary artifact produce while coding, which is not a common/popular opinion. Still, i love to see someone pushing forward on this.
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/53403#disc...
Nevertheless it could have been working better.
- basics are easy
- everyone can do basics
- need to do the things that will bring in the next 1000 users.
- everyone already does the basics
We deal with it, but even with options like jj, it always feels like you're settling. Git works, and we are familiar with it, but is it much more than that? Our baseline expectation should be higher.
1. Commits are really just manual checkpoints while you’re working. Why not automatically checkpoint everything so you can actually go back to an older implementation without needing to remember to commit it?
2. Agentic workflows are so deeply single player. It’s very annoying, I want to collaborate with my team with agents, not review the output of one dev’s agent which they’ll just shove back into their existing agent.
Maybe I’m pessimistic, but I think this just gives micro-managers the data they need to micro-manage you. It invites people to scrutinize the process, instead of the results.
Not once have I wished to review a colleague’s conversation with an AI. I want to review finished work.
I look at this and I can only imagine layoffs being justified with “bad prompt quality”. An incident retrospective broadcasting your agent conversations to the entire company, with people speculating where you should have put the “make no mistakes”.
It’s a shame, really, because I like Zed as an editor, but I can’t bring myself to support them if this is the direction they’re choosing.
Jujutsu already does this. I had agent screwing up changeset over couple hour long session and it took one shell command to split on pieces with longer pause.
The only downside is that because of Jujutsu snapshots it can't be used inside sandbox (since all jj commands are mutating)
One thing they need to add is a way to double click on file names in agent output to navigate to it. It works in the bottom terminal but not the agent terminal panes or built in agents
Zed is my daily driver and I'm pretty happy with it. I often switch over to other editors to do things Zed can't, but it's rarer than you'd think and really isn't that much of a hassle.
Completely ditched VS Code and never looked back.
Maybe some Ubuntu-specific issue?
Is it available now? Still seems to be a waitlist?