Our goal at Zed has always been to build the world’s best code editor.
For many, the best editing experience must include first-class agentic AI. That’s why we’ve made Zed the world’s fastest AI code editor and launched the Agentic Engineering series to explore how programmers can use AI effectively.
But we’ve heard from others on GitHub discussions and issues who either cannot or would prefer not to use Zed's AI features. We’re here for you, too. You’re now able add a global setting to disable Zed AI to your settings.json file:
{ "disable_ai" : true }
This change hits Preview today and will be in our Stable release next week.
And soon new users can also disable all AI features in Zed with a single switch during onboarding.
The disable AI switch during onboarding.
Some developers have fundamental objections to AI in their coding process—whether it's concerns about training data, environmental impact, or philosophical reasons about machine-generated code. You may prefer the predictability and control that comes with traditional development tools, without any AI suggestions interfering with your workflow.
Many organizations restrict AI tool usage, especially when working with proprietary code, and legal teams may require AI-free development environments. Other companies have approved specific AI vendors that aren't available in Zed yet, or in editors generally.
We've heard these concerns from our users, and we agree these are valid engineering decisions. Zed is built to respect your intent. If you don’t want AI in your workflow, it won’t be there.
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