AI and developer tools go hand in hand. Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene a few years ago, seasoned developers and hobby developers alike have been using LLMs (large language models) to fix bugs, explain functions, and even build entire apps.
Alongside that, new AI tools like ShellMate and Ellipsis have sprung up with the goal of making a developer's life easier, and already popular tools have begun to adopt the technology to improve their product offerings. One of them is Zed, the popular Rust-based, multiplayer code editor built by the creators of Atom and Treesitter.
Over the past two years, the Zed team has quietly experimented with LLMs to build a fast, reliable text editor that ships with the tools devs need right out of the box. That work caught the eye of Anthropic, spurring a conversation that quickly became collaboration.
The result is Zed AI, a hosted service developed in tandem with Anthropic that gives developers the ability to use AI right inside their code editor.
So what can it do? Zed AI enhances coding productivity with two core features: the Assistant Panel and Inline Transformations. The Assistant Panel provides a text-based interface where developers can issue commands to interact with AI models, pulling context from files, codebases, or terminal outputs to generate code or get help on demand.
Inline Transformations take this a step further by allowing you to modify your code in real time using natural language prompts, making it easier to iterate quickly without ever leaving your editor.
Throughout all of that you can swap out the model you interact with for whatever one you prefer. Zed currently works with Claude, Gemini, GPT, Llama, and has plans to expand further.