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).
Actually, I just checked and an active text thread is added to the inline prompt context (you may need to click on the box at the bottom of the inline prompt to include it, but then it is added by default for the next). So it looks fine to me (and it is nicer that it is more explicit this way).
There is also the "+" button to add files, threads etc, though it would be nice if it could also be done through slash commands.
Yes, and it followed the instructions in my text thread.
I opened a previous agent thread and it gave me the option to include both threads to the context of the inline prompt (the old text thread was included and I had to click to exclude it, the new thread was grayed out and I had to click to include it).
You can still include Text Threads as context in the inline assist prompt with @thread "name of thread", or using the `+` button. And it should suggest the active text thread for you, so it's one click. Let us know if that isn't working, we wanted to preserve the old workflow (very explicit context curation) for people who enjoyed previous assistant panel.