Zed, the text editor taking the development world by storm, has announced new AI features powered by Anthropic’s Claude.

Zed is a new text editor written entirely in Rust, benefiting from the speed, security, and other features the language provides. Zed has been gaining in popularity, with a Linux version of the text editor recently being released.

The company is now working with Anthropic to bring AI-powered features to the text editor, according to a blog post. Nathan Sobo, Zed founder, said the company has been looking for ways to integrate LLMs in a way that enhanced productivity.

In the two years since LLMs came onto our radar, we’ve been focused on building out the core of Zed: a fast, reliable text editor with the features developers need. Meanwhile, we’ve been quietly experimenting with integrating LLMs into our own workflows. Not as a flashy gimmick, but as a practical tool to enhance our productivity working on a complex, real-world codebase.

It appears Anthropic is a Zed fan, approaching the company to discuss a integration.

As we refined our AI integration, we caught the attention of some unexpected allies. Engineers at Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, discovered Zed and quickly saw the value of our raw, text-centric interface that puts minimal separation between the user and the language model. Their enthusiasm was validating, and our conversations sparked a dialogue that quickly evolved into a collaboration.

Now, we’re ready to introduce Zed AI, a hosted service providing convenient and performant support for AI-enabled coding in Zed, powered by Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and accessible just by signing in. We also worked with Anthropic to optimize Zed for implement their new Prompt Caching beta, leading to lightning-fast responses even with thousands of lines of code included in the context window while reducing cost.

Zed AI is composed of two components, one of which is the assistant panel.

The assistant panel is where you interact with AI models in Zed, but it’s not your typical chat interface. It’s a full-fledged text editor that exposes the entire LLM request. Code snippets, conversation history, file contents—it’s all there, and it’s all just text. You can observe, edit, and refine any part of the request using familiar coding tools, giving you full transparency and control over every interaction.

The second component is inline transformations.

Inline transformations, activated with ctrl-enter, allow you to transform and generate code via natural language prompts. What sets them apart is their precision and responsiveness.

To give you fast feedback, we’ve implemented a custom streaming diff protocol that works with Zed’s CRDT-based buffers to deliver edits as soon as they’re streamed from the model. You see the model’s output token by token, allowing you to read and react to changes as they happen. This low-latency streaming creates a fluid, interactive coding experience that keeps you engaged and in control throughout the process.

Inline transformations in Zed use the context you’ve built in the assistant panel. There’s no hidden system prompt－you see and control every input shaping the model’s output. This transparency lets you fine-tune the model’s behavior and improve your skills in AI-assisted coding.

Sobo says the company is working on additional features for Zed AI, including workflows for complex transformations and tools to efficiently build context. Sobo invites developers to help craft the future of Zed AI.

Zed AI embodies our belief in open, collaborative software development. We’ve created a transparent, extensible environment that empowers you to harness AI on your own terms, keeping you firmly in control of your tools and workflows.

We invite you to try Zed AI and become part of this journey. Experiment with custom slash commands, fine-tune prompts, and push boundaries. Share your innovations as extensions or as contributions to the Zed repository.

With Zed AI, you’re in the driver’s seat, directing AI’s potential within the familiar realm of text. Together, we’ll build an AI-assisted development experience that amplifies your creativity and adapts to your unique coding style. We’re excited to see what our community will create.

Anthropic is also helping to further Zed development, with the AI firm’s Rust engineers are actively contributing to Zed’s open-source codebase.

Those interested in trying Zed can download versions for macOS and Linux here.