I have launched Zed probably once a week for the past few months to try it out (each time running updates to see what's improved). I so badly want a native editor like this one to succeed. But the UX just seems very difficult to use. For a while, there were no settings UIs, and you had to edit everything in JSON. I think that's still true. But fine.
Now I'm excited that they actually have a Cursor-like agentic mode.
But the suggestions are still just nowhere near as "smart" as the ones from Cursor. I don't know if that's model selection or what. I can't even tell which model is being used for the suggestions.
Today I'm trying to use the Agentic stuff, I added an MCP server, and I keep getting non-stop errors even though I started the Pro trial.
First error: It keeps trying to connect to Copilot even though I cancelled my Copilot subscription. So I had to manually kill the Copilot connection.
Second Error: Added the JIRA MCP (it's working since Zed lists all the available tools in the MCP) and then asked a basic question (give me the 5 most recent tickets). Nope. Error interacting with the model, some OAuth error.
Third Weirdness (not error): Even though I'm on a Pro trial, the "Zed" agent configuration says "You have basic access to models from Anthropic through the Zed Free AI Plan" – aren't I on a Pro trial? I want to give you money guys, please, let me do that. I want to encourage a high performance editor to grow.
I'm not even trying to do anything fancy. I just am on a pro trial. Shouldn't this be the happiest of happy paths? Zed should use whatever the Pro stuff gives you, without any OAuth errors, etc. How can I help the Zed team debug this stuff? Not even sure where to start.
Update: The JIRA MCP seems to be working now, I'm not sure what happened.
I also added an elixir RuleSet (I THINK it's being used, but can't easily tell).
Still missing the truly fast and elegant suggestions from Cursor (especially when Cursor suggests _removing_ lines, haven't seen that in Zed yet). But I can see it getting there.
Some agents stuff also worked well. I had it fix two elixir warnings and a rust warning in our NIF.
Unrelated to Zed, I find myself in the awkward position of maintaining a (very small) rust file in our code base without ever having coded rust. And any changes, upgrades, etc are done via AI.
So far it seems to work (according to our unit tests) and the library isn't in any critical path. But it's a new world :-)
Also, Zed still seems to only give me access to "basic" models even though I'm in the pro tier trial. Not sure if that's a bug.
Now I'm excited that they actually have a Cursor-like agentic mode.
But the suggestions are still just nowhere near as "smart" as the ones from Cursor. I don't know if that's model selection or what. I can't even tell which model is being used for the suggestions.
Today I'm trying to use the Agentic stuff, I added an MCP server, and I keep getting non-stop errors even though I started the Pro trial.
First error: It keeps trying to connect to Copilot even though I cancelled my Copilot subscription. So I had to manually kill the Copilot connection.
Second Error: Added the JIRA MCP (it's working since Zed lists all the available tools in the MCP) and then asked a basic question (give me the 5 most recent tickets). Nope. Error interacting with the model, some OAuth error.
Third Weirdness (not error): Even though I'm on a Pro trial, the "Zed" agent configuration says "You have basic access to models from Anthropic through the Zed Free AI Plan" – aren't I on a Pro trial? I want to give you money guys, please, let me do that. I want to encourage a high performance editor to grow.
I'm not even trying to do anything fancy. I just am on a pro trial. Shouldn't this be the happiest of happy paths? Zed should use whatever the Pro stuff gives you, without any OAuth errors, etc. How can I help the Zed team debug this stuff? Not even sure where to start.