AI coding tools have split into two camps.
One camp is the “AI-native IDE” category. These tools lead with built-in agent workflows, memory, and model routing. Cursor and Windsurf live here.
The other camp is what you might call the “agent cockpit” category. The editor stays fast and ergonomic first, then layers in AI as a set of composable protocols. Zed is rapidly becoming the best example of this approach.
So, is Zed ready for AI power users in 2026?
If you define “AI power user” as someone running multiple models from multiple providers, with lots of MCP servers, and a strong preference for agentic workflows and memory, the answer is:
Yes, Zed is ready for serious daily use, but it’s not the most turnkey option.
Zed shines when you want a fast editor with a clean control plane for agents and tools. It’s less compelling if you want memory/skills and AI workflows to feel fully productized out of the box.
Evaluating Zed for AI readiness
For this article, “AI power user” isn’t a vibe. It’s a workload.
You probably qualify as an “AI power user” if most of these are true:
- You switch between Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, other LLMs, and/or local models depending on the task and cost.
- You rely on agentic editing, not just autocomplete. Multi-file changes, refactors, and iterative planning.
- You have a stack of MCP servers wired to your repo: tools, internal docs, ticketing systems, and terminals.
- You care about memory, either native or composable, because you build context over time.
- You want governance. Tool approvals, constraints, and predictable behavior across projects.
That’s the bar.
Now let’s evaluate Zed against it.
The readiness rubric for AI IDEs in 2026
This is the framework I would use to decide whether an IDE is “AI power user ready” in 2026.
Scoring
- 1 = missing
- 3 = usable
- 5 = excellent
Weights
These reflect what matters most for heavy AI workflows.
Rubric chart
| Category | What it tests | Weight | Zed score |
|---|---|---|---|
AI substrate | Multi-provider models, easy switching | 15% | 3 |
Agent workflow UX | Planning, multi-file edits, iteration | 20% | 3.5 |
MCP maturity | Many servers, tool routing, approvals | 20% | 4.5 |
Memory/Skills | Native memory or clean composable path | 15% | 3 |
Rules and governance | Constraints, approvals, project rules | 10% | 3 |
Ecosystem maturity | Debugging, languages, extensions | 10% | 3.5 |
Performance as a daily driver | Latency, reliability, editor feel | 10% | 4.5 |
Overall readiness score: 3.6 / 5
Zed clears the bar for AI power users. It just clears it in a different way than Cursor and Windsurf. And if you already use the terminal for most of your agentic workflows, then IDE-agentic integrations are less important than core editor features.
And Zed has one massive core feature: its WASM-based UI delivers incredible speed and crispness at 120 frames per second. It’s the snappiest editor around.
First impressions: the Zed UI is FAST
I spent two days really using Zed, and the first thing that hit me wasn’t the AI.
It was the feel. Here’s a little zoomed-in recording without any edits or speed-ups:
Zed is clean, snappy, and genuinely lovely to use. It reminded me how good an IDE can feel when the interface is simple and the editor isn’t dragging around extra weight.
Zed isn’t a VS Code fork and it’s not an Electron app. It was built from the ground up by the Atom team in Rust and it is FAST. Like 120 fps fast. This make even basic things like scrolling, opening files, and switching contexts feel super crisp. Zed WASM-based UI feels video-game crisp, which was on the creator’s minds.
I did hit a couple of speed bumps in AI setup, but overall, the experience has been great. And that matters more than people admit. If you’re an AI power user, you might live in your editor all day. And if the editor itself feels sluggish, no amount of agent magic really makes up for it.
Zed’s AI substrate is real and flexible
If you run multi-provider workflows, the first question is always: can I bring my own models?
Zed supports:
- using Zed-hosted models via its own subscription
- configuring external providers with your own API keys
- running external agents inside Zed
This matters because “AI power user” usually means you do not want a single provider lock-in. You want:
- cheap models for routine tasks
- stronger models for reasoning and refactors
- specialized models for codegen or debugging
- local options for privacy
Zed’s model substrate is good enough to support that reality.
Verdict: Zed is strong here. It is not the flashiest model router, but it should give you the control you need.
I did encounter some UI weirdness between agent threads, text threads, and Zed’s new CLI integrations, which are still in beta.
Agent workflows in Zed are serious, but not the most polished
Zed’s center of gravity for AI is the Agent Panel, where you run multi-step assistance and manage tool calls.
What Zed gets right for power users:
- It treats agent work as a first-class interaction, not a chat box bolted onto an editor.
- It includes explicit tool approval and permissioning, which matters once you enable terminal and MCP tools.
- It supports an agentic editing flow where changes are proposed and applied in a controlled way.
Zed also has a special “text thread” mode. This gives you a pure chat view where the text gets bigger and the whole conversation becomes easier to read. If you spend hours in agent chat windows, that is a real quality-of-life improvement. The snappiness shows up here too. Screen updates feel crisp and immediate, which makes the agent experience feel clean and visually sharp.
Of course, there are gotchas. This special “text thread” proved to behave differently than the “agent thread” mode, which appears to be a known issue. Confusion around the “thread” modes and the Zed’s older API-based UI features, versus their newer approach caused me more than a little head-scratching.
Where Zed still trails the AI-native IDEs:
- Cursor and Windsurf tend to feel more end-to-end with fewer seams.
- Zed’s agent experience is improving fast, but some parts still feel like a v1 product surface compared to Cursor’s maturity.
Verdict: Zed is probably ‘good enough’ to daily-drive your agent workflows, but Cursor and Windsurf still feel smoother for pure AI intensity. Also, be prepared to learn all of Zed’s quirks relating to its varied ways of interacting with AI through the UI. Such problems are not unique to Zed, but there’s definitely room for better UX here.
MCP support is where Zed becomes a power user tool
If you run lots of MCP servers, your core concern is not “does MCP exist”.
Your concern is:
- Can I control tools cleanly?
- Can I avoid tool conflicts?
- Can I scale to many servers without chaos?
Zed’s MCP support is strong and very power-user shaped. You can install MCP servers two ways: as extensions and as custom servers configured in settings.json
Profiles are the underrated feature
Zed supports profiles where you can:
- disable built-in tools
- enable only specific MCP server tools
- reduce conflicts and force predictable tool selection
This is a significant issue when you are running a tool zoo. Zed gives you a real control plane.
One UI design decision I think Zed nailed
Throughout my week of test-driving Zed one design choice really stood out: Zed treats “extensions” as the place where everything lives.Not just traditional extensions, but also MCP servers and agent integrations.
That feels correct.
If you’re building an agent cockpit, MCP servers and extensions are in the same category. They are all capabilities you install, enable, disable, and compose. Putting them in one place is clean, and it makes the mental model obvious.
Tool approvals are explicit
Zed has explicit permission controls for tool calls, including MCP tools.
This makes Zed feel safer for high agency workflows. It also makes it more enterprise-shaped than people expect.
Verdict: If MCP is core to your workflow AND you prefer to live in an IDE, then Zed is now absolutely in the top tier.
Alternatives for frontend engineering teams
Zed is quickly becoming an excellent agent cockpit. It is fast, clean, and it makes MCP-heavy workflows feel surprisingly manageable.
But if you are a frontend engineering team, your biggest bottleneck is usually not “how many MCP servers can I wire up.”
It is UI work.
Frontend teams live in a world of:
- design-to-code translation
- component churn
- styling and layout edge cases
- accessibility checks
- responsive behavior
- and the constant reality that UI is where product complexity shows up first
This is where Builder fits naturally as a complement to Zed.
Zed is a great place to do the final implementation work. It is where you edit, refactor, and review code with a crisp, modern developer experience.
Builder is the layer that helps frontend teams move faster on the hardest part of shipping software: building the UI correctly, quickly, and repeatedly.
Instead of thinking about Builder as “another agent platform,” the better mental model is:
- Zed is your daily driver editor for tight feedback loops.
- Builder is your best-in-class UI development toolset for frontend execution.
For frontend teams, that division of labor makes immediate sense. You keep Zed for speed and focus, and you use Builder when the work is inherently UI-shaped: components, screens, polish, and the design-to-production gap.
Memory/Skills is the main gap for turnkey AI power users
This is the part that determines whether Zed feels “ready” or “close”.
Cursor has productized Skills as a core capability with ongoing improvements.
Windsurf also treats Memories as a first-class concept alongside MCP and rules.
Zed does not currently present skills or memory in that same productized way.
But Zed can still do memory via MCP
The power user move in Zed is to treat memory as a tool.
Because Zed has strong MCP support, you can connect memory servers and persist context outside the editor.
So the question is not “can Zed do memory”.
It is “do you want memory as a polished feature, or as a composable building block”.
- If you want turnkey memory: Cursor or Windsurf wins.
- If you are happy composing memory into your tool plane: Zed is viable.
Verdict: Zed is “ready” for memory only if you are comfortable assembling it. And honestly, many devs are coming to prefer this model anyway.
External agents are Zed’s sleeper advantage
If you already live in the CLI agent world, Zed’s strongest play is not its built-in assistant.
It is external agents.
Zed supports external agents via the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), which integrates third-party agents in a structured way.
Zed’s documentation lists external agents including:
- Gemini CLI
- Claude Code
- Codex CLI
- OpenCode
This is strategically important.
A lot of “AI power user” workflows in 2026 look like this:
- Run Claude Code for deep refactors
- Use Codex or another agent for repetitive codegen
- Use a fast editor as the place where edits land and are reviewed
Zed is aiming to be the editor where all that comes together.
A real limitation I ran into with Claude Code
Not all of Claude Code’s default slash commands work inside Zed’s Agent window yet. In my testing, only a small subset behaved the way I expected.
That sounds worse than it is.
In my workflow, I am mainly calling those Claude commands from the terminal anyway, not inside a dedicated agent UI. So it didn’t really block me. It’s more of a reminder that Zed is still expanding its external-agent operations over time.
The current caveat
Zed explicitly notes some feature gaps for external agents. Some assistant features do not work consistently across all external agents yet.
This means Zed is extremely promising for “best-of-breed agents in one cockpit,” but it’s still catching up on full parity.
Verdict: If you want to run the best agent for each job inside one editor, Zed is unusually well-positioned.
Rules and governance are good, but still developing
Once you let agents run tools, you need constraints.
Zed supports rules and tool approvals, and it is explicit about the permission model.
That said, Zed’s rules system still has some sharp edges. The documentation notes some limitations and compatibility constraints.
Verdict: Zed has the right primitives, but it is not the most polished rules system yet.
Ecosystem maturity still matters for daily driver reality
Even for AI power users, the editor must still be an editor.
This is where VS Code’s gravitational pull remains brutal. Its extension ecosystem is hard to beat, and that affects real teams.
VS Code is also pushing deeper into agent workflows, including agent mode and MCP support.
JetBrains is also worth mentioning because its AI Assistant includes MCP support documentation, making it more relevant to power users than expected.
Verdict: Zed is strong and improving, but ecosystem gravity is still real, especially for niche workflows.
Zed vs Cursor vs Windsurf vs VS Code for power users
This is the practical comparison most developers want.
Comparison chart
| Capability | Zed | Cursor | Windsurf | VS Code + Copilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Multi-provider models | Mixed | Strong | Strong | Strong |
Agent workflow polish | Good | Best | Strong | Strong |
MCP control plane | Excellent | Good | Good | Good |
Built-in memory | Composable | Native | Native | Mixed |
External agents in-editor | Strong via ACP | Limited | Limited | Varies |
Ecosystem breadth | Growing | VS Code base | VS Code base | Best |
Final verdict for 2026
Zed is ready if you want an agent cockpit
Zed is ready right now if:
- You run a lot of MCP servers and want a clean way to manage tools and conflicts
- You are multi-provider by default
- You like external agents and want Claude Code or Codex CLI integrated into your editor workflows
- You are comfortable composing memory through MCP instead of expecting it as a turnkey product feature
OR
- You do most of your AI agentic work in a dedicated terminal, and what you really want from your IDE is something new, clean, and super fast.
Zed is not the easiest choice if you want maximum AI productization
Zed is not the easiest pick if:
- You want memory to “just work” like Cursor or Windsurf
- You want the most mature AI UX today with the fewest seams
- You need a massive extension ecosystem for niche languages and workflows
Where Builder fits for frontend teams
In 2026, the question is not which editor has AI. Most of them do.
The question is where your team actually wins time.
For frontend engineering teams, the real leverage is not just better autocomplete or another chat window. It is shipping UI faster with fewer iterations, especially across design handoffs, component changes, and last-mile polish.
That is where Builder fits.
If you want to keep Zed as your daily driver for fast, clean implementation work, Builder is worth considering as a layer that helps your team execute UI-heavy work more quickly. It is less about orchestrating MCP servers and more about giving frontend teams best-in-class tools for building screens, components, and production-ready interfaces.
The short version
If Cursor is an AI IDE, Zed is becoming an AI editor control plane.
For many power users, that’s exactly the point.
I’d say that Zed is ready for serious daily AI power-use in 2026 if you don’t mind some papercuts settling in to their agent-related UIs.
