Zed

Written from scratch in Rust by the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter, Zed reached 1.0 in April 2026 after five years of development and now runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Its custom GPUI framework renders the entire interface on the GPU the way a game engine would, which keeps input latency low even in large files, and Tree-sitter drives syntax awareness throughout. Collaboration is native rather than bolted on: real-time multiplayer editing, channels, SSH remoting, a git panel, and a debugger all ship in the box. AI features center on the Agent Panel, where built-in or external agents edit code agentically using your own provider keys, local models through Ollama, or the optional Zed Pro subscription that funds the company. The editor itself is free and the roughly 88,000-star repository is GPL-3.0 licensed, with the GPUI framework under Apache-2.0. Developers choose it when they want editor performance measurably faster than Electron-based tools without giving up modern agentic workflows.