Claude Code: Now in Beta in Zed

Top of my head switching between IntelliJ and Zed:

- Git UI is extremely barebones with no support for other VCS

- No merge tool or side-by-side diffs

- Configuration is all JSON

- Would be nice having a full file tree for the search editor instead of just the list; having the functionality split between a tab and the outline panel is quite clunky.

- Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows or other configurations (multiple docks per side, multiple copies of the same panel linked to a specific tab).

Zed is basically a slightly more featured text editor, so it does a good job when I just want to open something quickly and do small edits. So it's really replacing Sublime Text.

But I find myself hopping out to other tools when I'm using Zed which wasn't really common with IntelliJ. So I still want to use a proper IDE for proper development work.

No side-by-side diff is a deal-breaker for me unfortunately.

I use git icdiff (a plugin) in my terminal. I use Zed and VSCode GUI editors, but I don’t care to use their git tools. Command line git is fine.

https://www.jefftk.com/icdiff

The IntelliJ 3-way mergetool/diff viewer is best in class. I haven't found anything else that touches it.

> Configuration is all JSON

Curious as someone dabbling with building an editor: what do you prefer? A different configuration language? A GUI? How do you save and sync settings? Just with JetBrains account sync?

> Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows

Is Zed's "zoom in" feature (shift-escape) that quickly maximises the active pane (excluding the file browser/git pane) enough? Or are you looking for the separate window experience of IntelliJ? (e.g. JetBrains lets you pop-out the commit window, I believe, which can be nice since once you close it you're back in the editor with nothing to switch or rearrange.)

Me either. I thought by now it would be standard UX everywhere, but that is very much not so.

Yes, a GUI for settings is nice if only for one thing: so there can be a search box that you can use to search over all the settings to find what you need in a pinch. It's a lot friendlier if I can do something like "Open Settings > Ctrl+F > 'Font'" or whatever than having to go find the manual and look it up.

I don't care about the configuration language so much personally (though JSON is of course pretty lame in a lot of ways for that task.)

> Curious as someone dabbling with building an editor: what do you prefer? A different configuration language? A GUI? How do you save and sync settings? Just with JetBrains account sync?

Really just a GUI for editing, the storage format can still be JSON and synced/backed up however you handle text files.

It just really nice having settings grouped by categories, with dropdowns for possible values, indicators for changes from default values or values overridden by project settings, search/hide/filters, and tooltips for what it does.

Right now the experience with Zed is: open the settings file, open the default settings file for documentation, and basically use search and copy-paste magic value strings/int/float/nulls into the right nested object/key.

> Is Zed's "zoom in" feature (shift-escape) that quickly maximises the active pane (excluding the file browser/git pane) enough? Or are you looking for the separate window experience of IntelliJ? (e.g. JetBrains lets you pop-out the commit window, I believe, which can be nice since once you close it you're back in the editor with nothing to switch or rearrange.)

Really the separate window experience (including the file browser/git pane). Really nice having the git panel just open on a window so you can quickly glance at changed files and quickly jump back to them for more editing. Or having search results able to spawn tabs in another pane/window so you don't have to keep switching back to search or rearranging the tab after opening the file from it.

Or even just expanding the workspace across monitors. Right now you can't even move tabs into its own window or across windows.

Sublime Merge comes to mind, but I used it briefly before switching to JetBrains products.

> I haven't found anything else that touches it.

Have Claude Code resolve merge conflicts, problem solved.

One area I would not trust CC

You get almost the same effect by typing “font” as a config key and going over autocomplete suggestions.

This is a great divider between people who want an IDE vs a text editor - Zed explicit is the latter.

Yeah, no, I tried that thinking it was going to be the JetBrains merge as a standalone product and it simply does not have the three-way sauce. Sublime doesn't even offer any way I can view a live base->left or base->right view as I do the merge does it?

"vibe merging"