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Zed

A fast code editor where the AI features are optional and can be switched off with one setting.

Instead of GitHub Copilot

L · SystemOpen sourceAI optionalNative app
zed.dev
Screenshot of the Zed website

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Most editors that added AI did it the way a restaurant adds a screen to every table, and Zed lets you take the screen away. Its blog explains a disable_ai setting that turns the AI off, and says that if you do not want AI in your workflow, it will not be there. The editor comes from the people behind Atom and Tree-sitter and runs on Mac, Linux and Windows.

Zed scores a 5 on self-direction, a 4 on footprint, lock-in, longevity and delivery and a 3 on power.

The source is GPL-3.0-or-later with some Apache-2.0 parts, and the README says Zed Industries is a for-profit company, so Power is a 3. For its own AI service Zed says code and prompts are discarded after each request, never stored and never used for training, and that it has zero-retention agreements with Anthropic. Those are the company's words, and the same post offers your own API keys or local models as the other route.

    What stands out

  • An editor with a setting that disables all the AI
  • GPL-3.0-or-later with some Apache parts, from a for-profit company
  • For its own AI service Zed says it never trains on your code
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For comparison, we also reviewed GitHub Copilot (15/30) and OpenAI Codex (20/30) and Claude Code (17/30) as a benchmark.

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