The new default layout is exactly backwards of what I want.
It should go: project tree | text editor | agent view | threads
Not to mention on most laptops you'll only have room for about two panes at a time. So they should be focusing on pane management and making it easy to swap between views. Not highlighting 4 pane workflows. Unless you have an ultra-wide monitor, I'd rather have a separate Agents window.
I use Zed a lot and this is a minor (can be configured) but telling design decision that really bothers me. How long until they decide editing itself isn't worth it anymore? Stop supporting VI mode?
Yeah, first thing I did was change all the locations back. I really dislike the automatic layout change they pushed.
Also, watching the change notes, most effort seems to be focused on agents this days, which is a bit worrying. I love Zed because it's great editor that also knows a bit about agents; I don't want it to continue pivoting towards pushing agent management deeper and deeper into the experience.
I don't have any problem with them investing heavily in this, I just think they need to be smart about the UX and not let the business VC drive the experience this much. Pivoting from text editor to agent manager is a bad choice IMO, when it can easily be both and help people onboard from editor to agentic workflows.
Personally, I still pay Zed because I think they’re doing great foundational work. However I’ve now almost entirely migrated to helix for editing needs.
> I don't want it to continue pivoting towards pushing agent management deeper and deeper into the experience.
AI and agent tooling is the only way this VC-backed company is going to make any money. Nobody is going to pay for a text editor, so they've had no choice but to enshitify it by chasing AI features for the last year+.
It should go: project tree | text editor | agent view | threads
Not to mention on most laptops you'll only have room for about two panes at a time. So they should be focusing on pane management and making it easy to swap between views. Not highlighting 4 pane workflows. Unless you have an ultra-wide monitor, I'd rather have a separate Agents window.
I use Zed a lot and this is a minor (can be configured) but telling design decision that really bothers me. How long until they decide editing itself isn't worth it anymore? Stop supporting VI mode?