Zed DeltaDB

214

aahamez about 3 hours ago 96 commentsRead Article on zed.dev

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Discussion Sentiment

57% Positive

Analyzed from 3251 words in the discussion.

Discussion (96 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

NoDodgeQuestion•about 3 hours ago

Zed should focus on basics. When it focuses on basics Zed is good.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/54150 failing to show newly created files and declining to provide a refresh button, instead adding a polling backend, breaks Zed on WSL.

Why a new version control system? Why not git, jj, or another existing system?

dlisboa•about 1 hour ago

There should be a concept called "engineering privilege".

I see some companies do things that are widely out of their core product and engineers there just having fun with a bunch of different stuff with seemingly no commitment to bring in revenue. They'll re-invent/re-write things constantly, write a new compiler/package manager for their chosen language, create new frameworks, new open source projects unrelated to their companies, etc.

It must be awesome to be able to work in these conditions and still get paid. I'm not hating on it, it's how we get a lot of the good stuff we use.

benjiro29•12 minutes ago

Because every company may have different needs that are not fulfilled by standards software. We have seen the large number of companies whose goal is to make custom software for other companies So is not always that reinventing is fun, but it may actually be needed.

The same logic also applies for software that is used internally. It's not always that developers want to rebuild stuff, but that they need to rebuild or alter software to fit their / company needs.

We have not even talked about cost or licensing or other issues.

echelon•1 minute ago

> Every change is linked to the agent conversation that produced it. From any line of code, find the conversation. From any message, jump to the code it touched.

This is how Zed leapfrogs the field and becomes a centicorn.

If you can train a model to operate at a higher level and with looser requirements, you've gotten rid of engineers in the loop and built a system for the automated synthesis of high quality software.

This is training data for the next stage.

thangalin•11 minutes ago

From 1996:

https://www.eng.auburn.edu/~kchang/comp6710/readings/They%20...

"There is the software. And then there are the databases beneath the software, two enormous databases, encyclopedic in their comprehensiveness. One is the history of the code itself -- with every line annotated, showing every time it was changed, why it was changed, when it was changed, what the purpose of the change was, what specifications documents detail the change. Everything that happens to the program is recorded in its master history. The genealogy of every line of code -- the reason it is the way it is -- is instantly available to everyone."

internet2000•28 minutes ago

I don't want Zed to focus on accommodating WSL's quirks.

manmal•about 2 hours ago

Their ACP integration is good (finally), at least with Codex. For when I want to be near the code, I prefer it now over TUIs or the Codex app. It feels much more immediate that way. Sticking to the basics will kill them IMO. They have been pitching themselves as agent-native for a while btw.

And the workflow they are describing in the post sounds amazing, I‘ve been wishing for that. It‘s orthogonal to CVS, no? You can still make PRs. But, crucially, you can loop people in early on, when it matters the most.

infogulch•about 1 hour ago

Unfortunately their Zed agent is completely broken when running on Windows connected to WSL/SSH remote because the terminal tool checks for paths using the local Path style (windows) which breaks when applied to paths on the remote (linux).

I fixed this and a couple related issues in a PR but it hasn't gotten any attention yet. I guess they are a bit swamped. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/59937

latchkey•about 2 hours ago

> Their ACP integration is good (finally), at least with Codex.

you must not use it much. try pasting in an image, quitting zed and restarting (ie: upgrading the app). it shows you the base64 encoded data instead of just showing the image. heck, it doesn't even show you the image when you paste it in. it just shows the filename.

DangitBobby•about 1 hour ago

ACP integration is very good, IMO. I'm using it with Claude Code. They've made so many improvements over time. I use image pasting myself, TBH I was excited it worked at all. Surprised that some rough edges around images are enough to ruin the whole thing for you.

manmal•about 2 hours ago

I use it constantly but haven’t felt the need to paste an image yet. I guess I‘m using pi and the Codex app more for that.

solarkraft•28 minutes ago

Oh, that sounds related to what I experienced. I recently had another look at Zed and tried to use it to full-text search through my workspace consisting of symlinked folders. Relevant things would just now show up, cmd+P also wouldn’t find the files. That’s where the evaluation stopped.

the__alchemist•37 minutes ago

I've been hitting that or something recent recently; it's what I would consider a severe bug because it can result in lost work and related. Basically, if you `git pull`, edit a file elsewhere, or use an LLM, zed's tree will remain stale unless you re-close and open the file. (Restarting the application doesn't sort it). So you end up overwriting the file with whatever was in the buffer.

ibejoeb•about 2 hours ago

I agree with you that I wish they'd just nail the editor. I've been using it for years now and I really like it, but there are a few rough parts (settings and LSPs especially) that could probably be tuned up in no time if the focus was there.

Having said that, I love the idea of correlating the agent sessions to the changes. I'm glad someone is working on it.

cannonpalms•4 minutes ago

Claude, for example, already does write a git commit trailer with a session ID.

hahahaa•about 1 hour ago

You don't need a tool for that just configure your agent to write commit messages that link to a LLM log. And changes between commits. Maybe don't care why do we even care?

ibejoeb•40 minutes ago

Of course you are right. I could write my own software to do what I want. Or, I could just do it all myself manually. This argument is valid in pretty much all cases, so I concede the point.

waqasx•37 minutes ago

This specific issue drove me mad for a couple of hours, I thought my LLM wasn't creating files and lying about it

alfalfasprout•about 2 hours ago

Did you even read the post? The idea is to tie conversations to code. This is a more sophisticated version of something like doltdb, not a git replacement.

sbankowi•about 1 hour ago

So like Fossil then.

I like Fossil be because it can be all in one. WIki, a place to store architectural diagrams, tickets, basic webgui, etc.

yza•about 2 hours ago

Why develop this when the core editor is almost unusable? On Linux wayland, copypaste is broken, the file manager is laggy and snippets do not trigger before the heavy hint logic is done. This is just on top of my head, the list is long

danmoz•about 1 hour ago

"Almost unusable"? Slight hyperbole don't you think? I initially tried the Flatpak version on Fedora 44 and had a few minor problems, but since switching to the terra repos version (terrapkg.com) I've had zero issues, Have you tried that?

For me, its a massive improvement over IntelliJ for my daily workflow.

the__alchemist•35 minutes ago

This is surprising to hear. I have Zed on my tablet as IntelliJ (PyCharm/RustRover) turn it into a space heater. Zed's introspection/refactoring/general language knowledge etc isn't on the same tier at JB; it's closer to VsCode in that regard. I.e., I'd classify Zed as a project-based editor, while JB is an IDE.

mhaberl•about 1 hour ago

> massive improvement over IntelliJ for my daily workflow.

Why?

I used Zed for about 6 months but I lost motivation.

I have the full jetbrains subscription and use it for some debugging etc. I got vim for quick edits and cli tooling for ai. I got no use case for Zed.

whalesalad•14 minutes ago

I have been using Zed for about a year now on Debian 12 / Wayland and it works flawlessly. Even with Toshy (macOS) keybindings. I have it installed now on my Framework 13 Pro (also Fedora 44, and also with Toshy) and it works great aside from a subtle (100ms?) lag when using ctrl+arrow-key. Otherwise it is great.

The only thing that doesn't work well is inertial scrolling[0]. But scrolling is a fucking shit show on Linux no matter what... so I don't necessarily fault Zed for this. The same issue occurs in other apps.

- [0] https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/14473

JaggedJax•about 2 hours ago

I had to stop using Zed because of this issue (which persists despite being closed): https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/38109

I can't use an editor where the file contents I'm being shown don't match the reality of the file. I guess this issue doesn't affect most people somehow, but in the age of CLI agents I'm not sure how more people aren't running into it.

I was really enjoying Zed for a short while before I ran into this fundamental issue.

the__alchemist•34 minutes ago

I stopped using it due to this issue as well; too dangerous/risky.

honeycrispy•about 1 hour ago

I do not have this issue. (Yes, I am on Linux/Wayland)

JaggedJax•about 1 hour ago

All I can say is it's the only editor I've ever used with this type of issue and unfortunately it's a deal breaker for me. I can get by with any other editor even if they aren't my favorite, but only Zed made me realize that the most important thing an editor can do for me is accurately show me files.

minraws•about 2 hours ago

Just installed it, works on my kde and niri setups (I logged out and switched to each), copy paste works as well. File manager laggi-ness I didn't notice I don't use it, I use it mostly to type stuff out.

I have never used snippets so unsure about that too, going from command bar seemed to work.

I think it might be bad, but could also be it's not correctly configured maybe try asking codex/claude or something to check if it can fix/fine tune the config, if that doesn't work file issues?

I do suspect it might be working for me cause I got lucky I do see an open issue[1], but given Zed is used a bunch the lack of comments does suggest maybe it's not that wide spread either way not a good look.

[1]: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/47004

Maybe I got lucky?? Does it not auto update on linux maybe I am on an old build... Very suspicious.

mosburger•about 2 hours ago

I use it as a daily driver with few if any problems, but I'm on macOS. Maybe their Linux support is particularly crappy?

f311a•about 2 hours ago

There are a lot of subtle bugs. I'm on macOS too, but perhaps my workflow is unusual? Every time I open it, I find small bugs. There are so many features that it's hard to maintain them, I guess.

For example, a lot of disable buttons do not actually disable stuff. They just hide it from the UI.

dylanz•about 2 hours ago

I started using Zed a couple weeks ago and immediately had issues with copy/paste/buffer on an M1 Mac. I tried a few suggested fixes and they didn't work.

NortySpock•about 1 hour ago

Agree, copy-paste feels like it works 80% of the time, which is maddening when 1 in 5 copy paste attempts fail. (mostly from zed to something else) Why??

At least Excel has the courtesy to telling you "Hey the copy-paste buffer said it didn't catch that, can you try again?"

Linux Wayland (Ubuntu 26.04)

Daunk•about 2 hours ago

It still doesn't actually display a window my end until I press a keyboard key or move the mouse. So very often I sit and wait for it to open, only to realize I have to press a random key for it to unhide.

Terrible Linux support.

adulion•about 1 hour ago

why develop this when it seems jetbrains had a local history feature which recorded every change for the past decade(s)

Petersipoi•about 2 hours ago

> when the core editor is almost unusable

Shit, as someone who uses Zed everyday, I didn't realize what I am using is unusable.

Pavilion2095•about 2 hours ago

Because it's not broken, the issues you're describing are far from universal. Also, fixing them won't bring any money.

umvi•about 1 hour ago

Hmm, yeah before "DeltaDB" I have a big list of things I would rather they develop/fix:

- Vertical activity bar (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/58868#issuecommen... - rejected because it "doesn’t match our design vision for Zed")

This is my #1 annoyance: clicking microscopic icons at the very bottom of the screen to switch views.

- Don't crash my entire PC when there's a large (100+ MB) JSON file in the working directory

- Don't freeze when resuming from suspension (I suspect this is GPU-driver related on linux) forcing me to `killall zed-editor`

docheinestages•about 3 hours ago

Sounds like a side-effect of being VC-backed. Like what the ex GitHub CEO went on to build (Entire). Unnecessary.

bastardoperator•about 1 hour ago

It also feels like his former company could implement his new company in a couple of weeks if they choose to.

ralusek•12 minutes ago

Can maybe think of one time in the last 10 years that I would have wanted this. Its only purpose is for training LLMs

javierhonduco•about 1 hour ago

I really love Zed and I want them to really succeed. Unfortunately it seems that they are swamped with various things and the issue tracker is not a priority for the team, which fair enough. OSS is a gift and I take it as such. Wild proposal but if someone is willing to start a "user advocate" contributor, I'll be happy to donate monthly so user requests can be taken a look at :)

pknopf•about 3 hours ago

A non-existent problem that nobody asked to solve...

mynti•about 2 hours ago

This feels very useful for training agents but almost completely useless to humans? Do I really want to go back to every change I made? Whatuse would that be?

g42gregory•about 3 hours ago

Looks like a great feature/product/functionality. I hope that Zed editor will make it work with LLMs/agents that run in the terminal, not just the Zen Agent itself. Is it even possible? I use OMP.sh agent running in Zed terminal.

randomblock1•about 3 hours ago

It supports anything with ACP. So it can actually run Codex and Claude Code, not just the Zed Agent.

Looks like omp supports ACP, so all you have to do is specify a Custom Agent in Zed and it should just work.

https://omp.sh/docs/acp

https://zed.dev/docs/ai/external-agents

ok_dad•about 3 hours ago

This is the killer Zed feature, IMO, that they support almost any agent via extensions. I deleted Cursor but still use the agent via Zed because it’s a lot nicer experience, Zed never had popups telling me Grok is half off. I also use OpenRouter and Zed.dev with it, that’s three providers out of dozens that it supports.

vehemenz•about 3 hours ago

Exactly. The more competitive the space is, the more important it is that products purposefully support 3rd-party providers. Now that people are increasingly switching from Anthropic/OpenAI for inference reseellers and on-prem compute, transparency and portability will be the new values, not being slightly better than the next agent or model.

joemccall86•about 3 hours ago

I use this every day — https://zed.dev/blog/terminal-threads

quacker•43 minutes ago

This landing page is not good. It's mired in out-of-context jargon and implementation detail. (What does "virtualize the worktree" mean? Git already has "effectively free" branching. What does branching "mid-run" mean? How does a teammate "join while the work is happening"? What/where are they joining?).

What actually is it and what value do I get out of it?

Reading the linked blog posts: It's a layer on top of git for CRDT-based collaborative editing that captures addressable code deltas + agent conversations. I could have real-time collaborative humans + agents development and can resume any agent conversation from any point in history, because it is all stored (powered by DeltaDB). I guess?

I actually might want this, but wouldn't know it from the landing page.

smy20011•about 2 hours ago

You can simulate this by having a jj repo with file system watches.

visiondude•about 3 hours ago

i think a system that uses git and file system artifacts (txt/md/xml files whatever preference) is much better. eng teams need to define their artifacts, eg plan file, reqs etc whatever is needed and important to that team. the agent convo itself doesn’t add much value IMO and adds unnecessary bloat.

drdexebtjl•about 2 hours ago

This makes me uncomfortable.

Maybe I’m pessimistic, but I think this just gives micro-managers the data they need to micro-manage you. It invites people to scrutinize the process, instead of the results.

Not once have I wished to review a colleague’s conversation with an AI. I want to review finished work.

I look at this and I can only imagine layoffs being justified with “bad prompt quality”. An incident retrospective broadcasting your agent conversations to the entire company, with people speculating where you should have put the “make no mistakes”.

It’s a shame, really, because I like Zed as an editor, but I can’t bring myself to support them if this is the direction they’re choosing.

mdotmertens•about 2 hours ago

Not only this. I'm also shuddering at the thought of how much more noise this adds which can only be filtered through LLMs.

drdexebtjl•about 2 hours ago

Don’t worry, Zed (or another company in their VC backers’ portfolios) will helpfully sell you inference to filter through that noise!

hkalbasi•about 2 hours ago

I guess this data is not intended to be used all the time. But occasionally you may find it useful in blame or bisect or similar things.

mcintyre1994•about 2 hours ago

The sort of company that would do those things is going to be mandating you to use their enterprise AI plan anyway, which already lets them read all your conversations if they want to.

drdexebtjl•about 1 hour ago

Letting them read my conversations is okay. Systematically reconstructing a timeline of every keystroke that went into a project, then immortalizing this timeline into a VCS, that’s the creepy part.

I suppose companies could do this anyway just by installing spyware in your work computer, but I would very much prefer if that spyware was not my editor of choice.

a2800276•about 2 hours ago

It's also delusional to think you can find that one edit that was really useful but you forgot to commit but then deleted in another giant commit.

As anyone who's ever tried to split a days worth of work apart with `git add -p` is well aware.

It may be feasible with a million agents, but they could remember what they typed three hours ago anyhow.

4lx87•about 2 hours ago

The way I’m seeing AI used by organizations is to produce process slop: tickets, summaries, docs, etc. rather than drive process change and optimization, or enable individuals to be more effective within the organization.

lostmsu•about 2 hours ago

I don't know. I've been giving Zed a chance for almost half a year now and it just doesn't seem to be going the way I would want an editor to go.

lrae•about 2 hours ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492533 (June 11th, 225 comments)

Is it available now? Still seems to be a waitlist?

xlii•about 2 hours ago

I start to sound like a Jujutsu fanboy but...

Jujutsu already does this. I had agent screwing up changeset over couple hour long session and it took one shell command to split on pieces with longer pause.

The only downside is that because of Jujutsu snapshots it can't be used inside sandbox (since all jj commands are mutating)

codethief•30 minutes ago

> The only downside is that because of Jujutsu snapshots it can't be used inside sandbox (since all jj commands are mutating)

I guess it depends? You could certainly start with another repo clone that's separate from the one you work on yourself?

ibejoeb•about 2 hours ago

Jujutsu is great, but it does not do this. It has no knowledge of agent sessions.

Valodim•4 minutes ago

You still get snapshots of the working tree every time an agent calls a jj command, including reading ones. This is regular for me that I'm not worried to lose any intermediate state.

tetris11•about 2 hours ago

I had the great pleasure/misfortune of being forced to work with LaminDB, and I can tell you folks; data provenance isn't going away -- it will be used to train the very AI models snapping at our heels

sanex•about 2 hours ago

I really don't want management critiquing when I swear at Claude, thanks.

CharlesW•about 2 hours ago

So is this basically Beads + Dolt? This isn’t to diminish it, it’d be great if this ends up being a less “vibe code-y” alternative to those.

pwillia7•16 minutes ago

that was my first question too. Here's hoping

__MatrixMan__•about 1 hour ago

If not, beads + dolt seems like it would be pretty great.

manzu•about 2 hours ago

this looks like jetbrains "local changes" but globally synced. "for the agents" mights scare people who jump to think about micromanagers, but these people mostly hide or fake work. even micromanagers will eventually give you an agent to use so it won't matter what is in the change log, what matters is speed+quality. and since you can iterate from any branch you have inginite try and retry possibilities

imagetic•about 3 hours ago

I have fallen in love with Zed.

tamimio•36 minutes ago

I have been using zed for almost 2ish years now, great overall, but last month when I tried ACP with opencode and even omp, it gave me many issues that it was easier just to use the terminal directly, oh, and I couldn’t select the model that time not sure if it’s fixed now.

jackling•about 1 hour ago

I really do like Zed, it's snappier than VS code and with pretty good vim emulation. Even through SSH, the native UI allows for no network latency, compared to something like vim+terminal. Like many other posters, I do feel like the core editor is getting worse.

Some issues I've encountered recently at work:

- Routinely encounter bugs with the python language server, it's particularly slow when compared to using VSCode. All that snappiest disappears when finding symbols after the '.' is considerably slower than my typing speed.

- I found similar issues with C++ code bases.

- It's also so hard to debug when something goes wrong. I was trying to find out why pyright keep spinning on startup, but the "LSP logs" never show anything.

- Connecting via SSH always opens the repo in restricted mode, even though I check the "Trust all projects in" checkbox. Never happened before.

- Debugger UI is a mess. Make a run, stop the run, edit the task.json, try running again, and 2 tasks show up. One for the old and one for the new.

I stuck with it because I really do like the UI, the performance, and initially it seemed to be an improvement from VS Code for my workflows, but lately I've been moving back to code as it seems more stable. I don't really use agent features, so I don't think I'm the target customer for this or other priority Zed features.

I do see the usefulness of something like this, I'm interested to see if the new agentic style of programming will result in the "code" part of editors becoming second class (for the better) and will allow for more rapid development. Although I'm not looking forward to read my coworker's "threads" of how a feature was made, I have a feeling that it will be more difficult to read than the raw code, as from my experience, LLMs don't really employ terse and effective communication (might not be entirely fair, I found ChatGPT /study mode pretty good.)

Anyone know of a good replacement editor that might meet my usecase? I'm really a batteries included type of developer.

Lucasoato•about 2 hours ago

What problem does this product solve?

gpm•about 2 hours ago

Collaborative (as in simultaneous multiplayer) editing I think, which has been Zed's mission since before LLMs were a thing...

See https://zed.dev/blog/introducing-deltadb but also https://zed.dev/blog/crdts from years ago.

esafak•about 3 hours ago

Basically what IntelliJ calls local history. It is a feature that has saved my bacon. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/local-history.html

vulkoingim•about 2 hours ago

Similar, but not as polished, also exists in VSCode and derivatives, named the same way. Definitely saved me a few times as well.

dunham•about 2 hours ago

This saved me from accidental resets in the past. I learned it existed because the files were showing up in mdfind

jasonlotito•about 3 hours ago

Yes, I concur. Local History is wonderful; nice to see Zed getting its own version.

lemonberry•about 3 hours ago

Ooooh, this is cool. I was unaware of this. Thanks for the link.

adastra22•about 3 hours ago

Is this closed source?

systemvoltage•about 2 hours ago

Snapshots have an intention behind them as a chunk that the programmer thought of. It has infinite flexibility depending on the programmer/team. IMO they are a necessary feature, but the article considers it a bug. It’s an explicit and deliberate chunking of code writing process which is what you want in a chaotic “collaborative” environment. The system doesn’t get to decide but you decide when to commit.

m3kw9•about 3 hours ago

It should work with github inbetween commits, that i may use. Right now I'm using staging as an in bewteen in a dangerous way.

teaearlgraycold•about 3 hours ago

This is a big unsolved dev tooling problem. Glad someone competent is working on it.

cute_boi•about 3 hours ago

Yes, but it saps away the time that could be used to improve zed.

skhameneh•about 3 hours ago

Or it’s actively used to improve Zed faster (or more efficiently).

whalesalad•about 3 hours ago

zed is open source, you are free to improve it on your own

cute_boi•about 2 hours ago

Yes, it is open source, and I am not saying they should not do it. Chromium is also open source, but if they added too much nonsensical AI functionality, I would be upset. I am free to improve it on my own, but that does not mean I cannot express how I feel.

I have not gone to the Zed repository and created an issue telling them to stop developing DeltaDB because it takes away the maintainers’ time.

guess__who•about 1 hour ago

Rust cult stikes again.

jackling•about 1 hour ago

I don't understand, what do you mean by this?