June 11, 2026
Commit drama just got a sequel
Software Is Made Between Commits
Zed says the real coding happens in the chat, and commenters are already fighting about it
TLDR: Zed wants to replace some of the usual coding checkpoint routine by saving the live conversation behind the work, especially when AI is involved. Commenters are split between curious and deeply annoyed, with some calling it fresh thinking and others saying software tools are becoming exhausting.
Zed just tossed a lit match into one of tech’s oldest arguments: do we still need the whole commit, push, review, repeat routine, or is the real work happening in the conversation before any of that? Their big pitch is a new system called DeltaDB, which tries to save not just the code, but the running back-and-forth that created it, especially when humans and AI helpers are both editing at once. In plain English: Zed wants the discussion and the work to live together instead of being awkwardly glued back together later in places like GitHub.
But the comments? That’s where the fireworks are. One camp thinks this sounds like a bold rethink of stale software rituals. Another is already exhausted. The most relatable meltdown came from one commenter who groaned, “I hate software tools now”, comparing modern coding tools to a hammer that should not demand constant emotional attention. Ouch. Another user brought the poetry-and-snark combo with “Music is the silence between notes,” basically saying: just because something happens between milestones doesn’t mean you need a whole new religion around it.
Then came the trust issues. One Zed user praised the editor for being fast and for letting them block what they called “slop machine features,” while another sighed that Zed is sadly becoming exactly what critics warned about. And hovering over all of it is a practical question nobody let slide: if this is the future, how does it work when teams juggle lots of separate projects instead of one giant everything-bucket? So yes, Zed announced a shiny new way to build software — but the crowd is split between intrigued, tired, and fully ready to roast it.
Key Points
- •Zed says it is building DeltaDB, a version-control system designed to capture fine-grained code changes and the conversations with agents that produce them.
- •The article argues that pull requests and commit-based workflows do not reflect how Zed’s team collaborates, which it says often happens directly in the same worktree before commits are made.
- •DeltaDB is described as recording a stream of stable, addressable deltas instead of snapshots, enabling references to code at any moment in its evolution.
- •Zed says DeltaDB records messages and edits side by side and uses conflict-free replicated worktrees so multiple people and agents can edit the same files across machines.
- •The company says a beta version of DeltaDB will be ready in a few weeks, with a waitlist for early users, and notes that it is hiring.