The team behind the Zed editor has announced native support for Claude Code, Anthropic’s developer-focused AI agent, now integrated via the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) — an open standard designed to connect any agent to any compatible editor.
What This Means for Developers
Previously, using Claude Code required terminal-based workflows or manual SDK setup. With ACP integration, developers can now:
- Run Claude Code as a native agent inside Zed
- View and approve edits across multiple buffers
- Interact with the agent via slash commands
- Track agent tasks directly in the sidebar
- Customize workflows with real-time feedback
About ACP
The Agent Client Protocol is Zed’s open specification for agent/editor communication. The Claude Code integration uses a custom adapter that translates Anthropic’s SDK calls into ACP-compliant JSON-RPC messages.
The adapter is open source under the Apache license, enabling other editors — including Neovim, which already supports ACP — to integrate Claude Code with minimal friction.
Current Limitations
Due to SDK constraints, some Claude Code features are not yet supported in Zed:
- Plan Mode is unavailable
- Commands like
/compactare not functional - Multi-agent sessions and remote SSH support are not yet implemented
The Zed team is actively working to expand functionality as the Claude SDK evolves.
Community Response
The launch has sparked discussion around:
- Agent interoperability across editors
- The future of ACP as a standard
- Comparisons with tools like Cursor, VSCode, and Codex
- The need for more flexible agent orchestration
Despite limitations, many developers see ACP as a foundational step toward modular, editor-agnostic AI tooling.
Final Thoughts
Claude Code’s arrival in Zed via ACP marks a significant milestone in the evolution of AI-assisted development environments. With open protocols and extensible tooling, the ecosystem is moving toward a future where agents are portable, customizable, and deeply integrated into the developer workflow.
For those exploring the frontier of AI-powered coding, this is a project worth watching.
📎 Read the full article on CyNews
📎 Technical details on the Zed blog
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