All activity in Zed forums is subject to our Code of Conduct. Additionally, contributors must sign our Contributor License Agreement before their contributions can be merged.

Contribution ideas

Zed is a large project with a number of priorities. We spend most of our time working on what we believe the product needs, but we also love working with the community to improve the product in ways we haven't thought of (or had time to get to yet!)

In particular we love PRs that are:

Fixing or extending the docs.
Fixing bugs.
Small enhancements to existing features to make them work for more people (making things work on more platforms/modes/whatever).
Small extra features, like keybindings or actions you miss from other editors or extensions.
Part of a Community Program like Let's Git Together or The Guild.
Features we explicitly called out as open to community contributions

If you're looking for concrete ideas:

Docs issues
Issues suitable for first-time contributors and returning contributors
Triaged bugs with confirmed steps to reproduce
Area labels to browse bugs in a specific part of the product you care about (after clicking on an area label, add type:Bug to the search)
The board with the features we explicitly invited the community's contributions for.

Thinking about proposing or building a larger feature? Don't start with a PR, start with reading the Zed Feature Process for how we think about feature design — what context to provide, what integration points to consider, and how to put together a strong proposal. The right place for the proposals is GitHub discussions (not GitHub issues).

Sending changes

The Zed culture values working code and synchronous conversations over long discussion threads.

The best way to get us to take a look at a proposed change (excluding new features) is to send a pull request. We will get back to you (though this sometimes takes longer than we'd like, sorry). Pinging the maintainers by their username or writing them emails spends their time but does not bump the priority of a particular PR.

If you need more feedback from us: the best way is to be responsive to GitHub comments, or to offer up time to pair with us.

If you need help deciding how to fix a bug, or finish implementing a feature that we've agreed we want, please open a PR early so we can discuss how to make the change with code in hand.

Although we will take a look, we tend to only merge about half the PRs that are submitted. If you'd like your PR to have the best chance of being merged:

Make sure the change is desired: we're always happy to accept bugfixes, but features should be confirmed with us first if you aim to avoid wasted effort. If there isn't already a GitHub issue for your feature with staff confirmation that we want it, start with a GitHub discussion rather than a PR.
- This especially applies to any changes proposed to the Zed Extension API.
Include a clear description of what you're solving, and why it's important.
Include tests. For UI changes, consider updating visual regression tests (see Building Zed for macOS).
If the change is visible in the UI, attach screenshots or screen recordings.
Make the PR about one thing only, e.g. if it's a bugfix, don't add two features and a refactoring on top of that.
Keep AI assistance under your judgement and responsibility: it's unlikely we'll merge a vibe-coded PR that the author doesn't understand.

A note on open pull requests: currently we cap them at three per author. We're lucky to get a lot of contributions, and the pattern we've seen is that landing your first PR dramatically improves the odds for every PR after it. A stack of simultaneous PRs, by contrast, tends to just sit and rot against a moving main branch. It's better to start with one, see it through, then bring on the next. It also keeps things sane when the contributions are coming in faster than we can review them, including the occasional automated burst.

Things we will (probably) not merge

Although there are few hard and fast rules, typically we don't merge:

Anything that can be provided by an extension. For example a new language, or theme. For adding themes or support for a new language to Zed, check out our docs on developing extensions.
Changes to the Zed Extension API submitted without prior discussion involving Zed staff.
New file icons. Zed's default icon theme consists of icons that are hand-designed to fit together in a cohesive manner, please don't submit PRs with off-the-shelf SVGs.
Features where (in our subjective opinion) the extra complexity isn't worth it for the number of people who will benefit.
Giant refactorings.
Non-trivial changes with no tests.
Stylistic code changes that do not alter any app logic. Reducing allocations, removing .unwrap()s, fixing typos is great; making code "more readable" — maybe not so much.
Anything that seems AI-generated without understanding the output.

AI Policy

We welcome the use of LLMs for coding, but we hold a high bar for all contributions, and we expect a human in the loop who genuinely understands the work an LLM produces on their behalf. For that reason, we don't accept contributions from autonomous agents. Pull requests that appear to violate this may be closed, sometimes without notice.

Don't rely on LLMs to write the whole thing for you when communicating with the maintainers (meaning replies to comments, PR descriptions, and alike). The readers are humans, and we'd like to hear from you, not from a model (we have models at home). If you're a non-native English speaker using an LLM to thoroughly edit or translate your messages to the maintainers, we'd encourage you to put the machine translation in a quote block and include the original text in your native language after it.

If you think it's helpful/necessary to share context from a chat with an LLM, please put the relevant part of it in a quote block (e.g., using >), disclose it as AI-generated, and add your own commentary explaining why it's relevant and what you take from it.

This policy was adapted from ripgrep's AI policy.

Internal advice for reviewers

If the fix/feature is obviously great, and the code is great. Hit merge.
If the fix/feature is obviously great, and the code is nearly great. Send PR comments, or offer to pair to get things perfect.
If the fix/feature is not obviously great, or the code needs rewriting from scratch. Close the PR with a thank you and some explanation.

UI/UX checklist

When your changes affect UI, consult this checklist:

Accessibility / Ergonomics

Do all keyboard shortcuts work as intended?
Are shortcuts discoverable (tooltips, menus, docs)?
Is it usable without a mouse (keyboard-only navigation)?
Do all mouse actions work (drag, context menus, resizing, scrolling)?
Does the feature look great in light and dark mode themes?
Are hover states and focus indicators clear and consistent?

Responsiveness

Does the UI scale gracefully on:
- Narrow panes (e.g., side-by-side split views)?
- Short panes (e.g., laptops with 13" displays)?
- High-DPI / Retina displays?
Does resizing panes or windows keep the UI usable and attractive?
Do dialogs or modals stay centered and within viewport bounds?

Platform Consistency

Is the feature fully usable on Windows, Linux, and macOS?
Does it respect system-level settings (fonts, scaling, input methods)?

Performance

All user interactions must have instant feedback.
- If the user requests something slow (e.g. an LLM generation) there should be some indication of the work in progress.
Does it handle large files, big projects, or heavy workloads without degrading?
Frames must take no more than 8ms (120fps)

Consistency

Does it match Zed’s design language (spacing, typography, icons)?
- Make sure to visit the icon design guidelines
Are terminology, labels, and tone consistent with the rest of Zed?
Are interactions consistent (e.g., how tabs close, how modals dismiss, how errors show)?

Internationalization & Text

Are strings concise, clear, and unambiguous?
Do we avoid internal Zed jargon that only insiders would know?

User Paths & Edge Cases

What does the happy path look like?
What does the unhappy path look like? (errors, rejections, invalid states)
How does it work in offline vs. online states?
How does it work in unauthenticated vs. authenticated states?
How does it behave if data is missing, corrupted, or delayed?
Are error messages actionable and consistent with Zed’s voice?

Discoverability & Learning

Can a first-time user figure it out without docs?
Is there an intuitive way to undo/redo actions?
Are power features discoverable but not intrusive?
Is there a path from beginner → expert usage (progressive disclosure)?

Bird's-eye view of Zed

We suggest you keep the Zed glossary at your side when starting out. It lists and explains some of the structures and terms you will see throughout the codebase.

Zed is made up of several smaller crates - let's go over those you're most likely to interact with:

gpui is a GPU-accelerated UI framework which provides all of the building blocks for Zed. We recommend familiarizing yourself with the root level GPUI documentation.
editor contains the core Editor type that drives both the code editor and all various input fields within Zed. It also handles a display layer for LSP features such as Inlay Hints or code completions.
project manages files and navigation within the filetree. It is also Zed's side of communication with LSP.
workspace handles local state serialization and groups projects together.
vim is a thin implementation of Vim workflow over editor.
lsp handles communication with external LSP server.
language drives editor's understanding of language - from providing a list of symbols to the syntax map.
collab is the collaboration server itself, driving the collaboration features such as project sharing.
rpc defines messages to be exchanged with collaboration server.
theme defines the theme system and provides a default theme.
ui is a collection of UI components and common patterns used throughout Zed.
cli is the CLI crate which invokes the Zed binary.
zed is where all things come together, and the main entry point for Zed.

Packaging Zed

Check our notes for packaging Zed.