You asked for it. A lot.
So we built it: our Claude Code integration is now available in public beta, running natively in Zed through our new Agent Client Protocol (ACP).
For months, developers have been asking us to bring Claude Code into Zed. We didn’t just want to bolt on a one-off integration; we wanted to build something better. ACP is our new open standard that lets any agent connect to Zed (and other editors, too). Claude Code is a perfect example of what’s possible.
Now you can:
- Run Claude Code as a first-class citizen in Zed's high-performance editor, not just a terminal interface
- Follow along in real-time as it edits across multiple files, with full syntax highlighting and language server support
- Review and approve granular changes in a multibuffer - accept or reject individual code hunks
- Keep Claude Code's task list anchored in your sidebar, so you always see what the agent is working on
- Define custom workflows with Claude Code's custom slash commands for your most common development tasks
A walkthrough of Claude Code in Zed.
Claude Code has gained broad popularity among developers thanks to its powerful code generation and finely tuned tools. While the command-line interface is powerful, when Claude Code is making changes across multiple files or refactoring complex logic, you may want to see the bigger picture and have more control on what code you accept or reject. With Zed, you get the best of both worlds: Claude Code's intelligence, freed from the terminal and deeply integrated into a highly performant editor.
You can now run Claude Code directly in Zed and use it side-by-side with Zed's first-party agent, Gemini CLI, and any other ACP-compatible agent. Make sure you’re on the latest version of Zed and find your available agents in the Plus menu in the Agent Panel.
Rather than creating a tightly-coupled integration specific to Claude Code, we built this integration using the Agent Client Protocol. We launched ACP as our open standard for connecting any AI agent with any compatible editor.
We built an adapter that wraps Claude Code's SDK and translates its interactions into ACP's JSON RPC format. This adapter bridges between Claude Code and ACP's standardized interface, allowing Claude Code to run as an independent process while Zed provides the user interface.
We are open sourcing the Claude Code adapter under the Apache license, making it freely available for any editor that’s adopted ACP to use; you can find the source code here. Since the popular CodeCompanion plugin for Neovim has already adopted ACP, Claude Code will also be available in Neovim.
We want to thank GitHub user Xuanwo for all his work since the ACP launch in building an ACP implementation for Claude Code - your speed to solution inspired us to work hard to keep up! We appreciate you for your contribution to the protocol's adoption. Give him a follow on GitHub and Twitter/X.
We want every agent usable in Zed. Gemini CLI and Claude Code are a great start, and we have more on the way, but there are new agents released every week and many great existing ones not yet speaking the protocol. ACP makes it simple to bring any agent into Zed's, Neovim's, or any other ACP-adapted editor's interface!
This beta delivers as much core Claude Code functionality as possible via the SDK. We're adding features like Plan mode in the coming days, and more advanced capabilities as Anthropic expands SDK support; for example, many built-in slash commands are not yet supported by the SDK. From here:
We're always looking for feedback on ACP, and welcome contributions from other agent (and client) builders. The more agents that work in Zed, the more choice you have as a developer.
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