Feedback 1: The README really needs more details. What does it do/not do? Don't assume people have used Cursor. If it is a Cursor alternative, does it support all of Cursor's features?
As a non-Cursor user who does AI programming, there is nothing there to make me want to try it out.
Feedback 2: I feel any new agentic AI tool for programming should have a comparison against Aider[1] which for me is the tool to benchmark against. Can you give a compelling reason to use this over Aider? Don't just say "VSCode" - I'm sure there are extensions for VSCode that work with Aider.
As an example of the questions I have:
- Does it have something like Aider's repomap (or better)?
Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely add a feature list. To answer your question, yes - we support Cursor's features (quick edits, agent mode, chat, inline edits, links to files/folders, fast apply, etc) using open source and openly-available models (for example, we haven't trained our own autocomplete model, but you can bring any autocomplete model or "FIM" model).
We don't have a repomap or codebase summary - right now we're relying on .voidrules and Gather/Agent mode to look around to implement large edits, and we find that works decently well, although we might add something like an auto-summary or Aider's repomap before exiting Beta.
Regarding context - you can customize the context window and reserved amount of token space for each model. You can also use "@ to mention" to include entire files and folders, limited to the context window length. (you can also customize the model's reasoning ability, think tags to parse, tool use format (gemini/openai/anthropic), FIM support, etc).
I've used both Cursor and Aider but I've always wanted something simple that I have full control on, if not just to understand how they work. So I made a minimal coding agent (with edit capability) that is fully functional using only seven tools: read, write, diff, browse, command, ask, and think.
I can just disable `ask` tool for example to have it easily go full autonomous on certain tasks.
> The README really needs more details. What does it do/not do? Don't assume people have used Cursor. If it is a Cursor alternative, does it support all of Cursor's features?
That's all in the website, not the README, but yes a bulleted list or identical info from the site would work well.
Am I the only one that has had bad experiences with aider? For me each time I've tried it, I had to wrestle with and beg the AI to do what I wanted it to do, almost always ending in me just taking over and doing it myself.
If nearly everytime I use it to accomplish something it gets it 40-85% correct and I have to go in to fix the other 60-15%, what is the point? It's as slow as hand writing code then, if not slower, and my flow with Continue is simply better:
1. CTRL L block of code
2. Ask a question or give a task
3. I read what it says and then apply the change myself by CTRL C and then tweaking the one or two little things it inevitably misunderstood about my system and its requirements
It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. Curious how this compares to others like Cline, VS Code Copilot's Agent mode, Roo Code, Kilo Code, Zed, etc. Not to mention those that are closed source, CLI based, etc. Any standout features?
Void dev here! The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, and we think that's because they simply feel better to use by having more control over the UX.
There are certainly a lot of alternatives that are plugins(!), but our differentiation right now is being a full open source IDE and having all the features you get out of the big players (quick edits, agent mode, autocomplete, checkpoints).
Surprisingly, all of the big IDEs today (Cursor/Windsurf/Copilot) send your messages through their backend whenever you send a message, and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). Your connection to providers is direct with Void, and it's a lot easier to spin up your own models/providers and host locally or use whatever provider you want.
We're planning on building Git branching for agents in the next iteration when LLMs are more independent, and controlling the full IDE experience for that will be really important. I worry plugins will struggle.
My 2c: I rarely need agent mode. As an older engineer, I usually know what exactly needs to be done and have no problem describing to the LLM what to do to solve what I'm aiming to do. Agent mode seems its more for novice developers who are unsure what tasks need to be broken down and the strategy that they are then solved.
Coding agents are the future and it's anyone's game right now.
The main reason I think there is such a proliferation is it's not clear what the best interface to coding agents will be. Is it in Slack and Linear? Is it on the CLI? Is it a web interface with a code editor? Is it VS Code or Zed?
Just like everyone has their favored IDE, in a few years time, I think everyone will have their favored interaction pattern for coding agents.
Product managers might like Devin because they don't need to setup an environment. Software engineers might still prefer Cursor because they want to edit the code and run tests on their own.
Cursor has a concept of a shadow workspace and I think we're going to see this across all coding agents. You kick off an async task in whatever IDE you use and it presents the results of the agent in an easy to review way a bit later.
As for Void, I think being open source is valuable on it's own. My understanding is Microsoft could enforce license restrictions at some point down the road to make Cursor difficult to use with certain extensions.
The weird thing is, the biggest reason I don't use Cursor much is because they just distribute this AppImage, which doesn't install or add itself to the Ubuntu app menu, it just sits there and I have to do
The setuid sandbox is not running as root. Common causes:
* An unprivileged process using ptrace on it, like a debugger.
* A parent process set prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, ...)
Failed to move to new namespace: PID namespaces supported, Network namespace supported, but failed: errno = Operation not permitted
I have to go Googling, then realize I have to run it with
Often I'm lazy to do all of this and just use the Claude / ChatGPT web version and paste code back and forth to VS code.
The effort required to start Cursor is the reason I don't use it much. VS code is an actual, bona fide installed app with an icon that sits on my screen, I just click it to launch it. So much easier. Even if I have to write code manually.
I've tried many of AI coding IDE's, the best ones like RooCode are good simply because they don't gimp your context. The modern day models are already more then capable enough for many coding tasks, you just need to leave them alone and let them utilize their full context window and all will go well. If you hear a bad experience with any of these IDE's, most of the time its because its limiting use of context or improper management of related functions.
Yup - honestly the space is so open right now still, everyone is trying haha. It's got quite hard to keep track of different models and their strengths / weaknesses, much less the IDE and editor space! I have no idea which of these AI editors would suite me best and a new one comes out like every day.
I'm still in vim with copilot and know I'm missing out. Anyway I'm also adding to the problem as I've got my own too (don't we all?!), at https://codeplusequalsai.com. Coded in vim 'cause I can't decide on an editor!
There's so much happening in this space, but I still haven't seen what would be the killer feature for me: dual-mode operation in IDE and CLI.
In a project where I already have a lot of linting brought into the editor, I want to be able to reuse that linting in a headless mode: start something at the CLI, then hop into the IDE when it says it's done or needs help. I'd be able to see the conversation up to that point and the agent would be able to see my linting errors before I start using it in the IDE. For a large, existing codebase that will require a lot of guardrails for an agent to be successful, it's disheartening to imagine splitting customization efforts between separate CLI and IDE tools.
For me so far, cursor's still the state of the art. But it's hard to go all-in on it if I'll also have to go all-in on a CLI system in parallel. Do any of the tools that are coming out have the kind of dual-mode operation I'm interested in? There's so many it's hard to even evaluate them all.
I posted this the other day, but didn't get a response:
Does anyone think this model of "tool" + "curated model aggregator" + "open source" would be useful for other, non-developer fields? For instance, would an AI art tool with sculpting and drawing benefit from being open source?
I've talked with VCs that love open source developer tools, but they seem to hate on the idea of "open creative tools" for designers, illustrators, filmmakers, and other creatives. They say these folks don't benefit from open source. I don't quite get it, because Blender and Krita have millions of users. (ComfyUI is already kind of in that space, it's just not very user-friendly.)
Why do investors seem to want non-developer things to be closed source? Are they right?
Its agent is a lot worse than Cursor's in my experience so far. Even tab edits feel worse.
My understanding is that these are not custom models but a combination of prompting and steering. That makes Cursor's performance relative to others pretty surprising to me. Are they just making more requests? I wonder what the secret sauce is.
One thing I noticed is that there's no cost tracking, so it's very hard to predict how much you're spending. This is fine on tools like Cursor that are all inclusive, but is something that is really necessary if you're bringing your own API keys.
This is a great suggestion. We're actually storing the input/output costs of most models, but aren't computing cost estimates yet. Definitely something to add. My only hesitation is that token-based cost estimates may not be accurate (most models do not provide their tokenizers, so you have to eg. estimate the average number of characters per token in order to compute the cost, and this may vary per model).
This is very cool and I'm always happy to see more competition in this space. That said, two suggestions:
- The logo looks like it was inspired directly from the Cursor logo and modified slightly. I would suggest changing it.
- It might be wise to brand yourself as your own thing, not just an "open source Cursor". I tend to have the expectation that "open source [X]" projects are worse than "[X]". Probably unfair, I know.
Thanks for the suggestions - these issues have been a bit painful for us, and we will probably fix them in the next major update to Void.
Believe it or not, the logo similarity was actually unintentional, though I imagine there was subconscious bias at play (we created ours trying to illustrate "a slice of the Void").
A minor counterpoint, I personally like the "open source Xyz" because I instantly know what the product is supposed to do. It's also very SEO friendly because you don't know the name of the open source version before you find it, so you can Kagi/Google/DDG "open source Cursor" and get it as a top result, instead of a sea of spammy slime.
Void dev here! As others have mentioned, VSCode strongly limits the functionality that you can build as an extension. A few things we've built that aren't supported as an extension:
- the Accept|Reject UI and UX
- Cmd+K
- Control over the terminal and tabs
- Custom autocomplete
- Smaller things like ability to open/close the sidebar, onboarding, etc
It's been a lot harder to build an IDE than an extension, but we think having full control over the IDE (whether that's VSCode or something else we build in the future) will be important in the long run, especially when the next iteration of tool-use LLMs comes out (having native control over Git, the UI/UX around switching between iterations, etc).
As an (ex) VSCode extension developer, VSCode really does lock down what you can do as an extension. It's well intentioned and likely led to the success of VSCode, but it's not great if you want to build entirely new UI interactions. For instance, something like the cmd-k inline generation UI in Cursor is basically impossible as a VSCode extension.
One of the big _disadvantages_ is that it prevents access to the VSCode-licensed plugins, such as the good C# LSP (seems EEE isn't completely dead). That's something to pay attention to if you're considering a fork and use an affected language.
I wish all these companies the best and I understand why they’re forking, but personally I really don’t want my main IDE maintained by a startup, especially as a fork. I use Cursor, and I’ve run into a number of bugs at the IDE level that have nothing to do with the AI features. I imagine this is only going to get worse over time.
I've just installed it and tried to have it create a hello world using gemma3:27b-it-qat through ollama but it refused to do it claiming it doesn't have access to my filesystem.
Then I opened an existing file and asked it to modify a function to return a fixed value and it did the same.
I'm an absolute newb in this space so if I'm doing something stupid I'd appreciate it if you helped me correct it because I already had the C/C++ extension complain that it can only be used in "proper vscode" (I imported my settings from vscode using the wizard) and when this didn't work either it didn't spark joy as Marie Kondo would say.
Please don't get me wrong, I gave this a try because I like the idea of having a proper local open source IDE where I can run my own models (even if it's slower) and have control over my data. I'm genuinely interested in making this work.
Thanks for writing! Can you try mentioning the file with "@"? Smaller models sometimes don't realize that they should look for files and folders, but "@" always gives the full context of whatever is in the file/folder directly to them.
Small OSS models are going to get better at this when there's more of a focus on tool-use, which we're expecting in the next iteration of models.
May I ask why did you decide against starting with (Eclipse) Theia instead of VSCode?
It's compatible but has better integration and modularity, and doing so might insulate you a bit from your rather large competitor controlling your destiny.
Or is the exit to be bought by Microsoft? By OpenAI? And thus to more closely integrate?
If you're open-source but derivative, can they not simply steal your ideas? Or will your value depend on having a lasting hold on your customers?
I'm really happy there are full-fledged IDE alternatives, but I find the hub-and-spoke model where VSCode/MS is the only decider of integration patterns is a real problem. LSP has been a race to the bottom, feature-wise, though it really simplified IDE support for small languages.
I mostly use Cursor for the monthly flat pricing which allows me unlimited (slow) calls to most LLMs (Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude 3.7, etc) without worrying about spending anything more than $20/month.
Really interesting from a 'in a bubble' point of view. I've been using Void for the past few weeks as a replacement for Bolt, Lovable, Tempo and the rest. Which is nothing like the use cases mentioned in this thread. Just shows how we're each focused on different parts of an environment? Of course I'm not a programmer, I'm just a slash-and-hack vibe coder. :)
For the record, I really like Void. It's great at utilising local models, which no-one else does. Although I'd love to know which are the best Ollama local coding models. I've failed with a few so the moment I'm sticking to Sonnet 3.7 and GPT 4.1. With 03 as the 'big daddy'. :)
Given that there's a dozen agentic coding IDEs, I only use Cursor because of the few features they have like auto-identification of the next cursor location (I find myself hitting tab-tab-tab-tab a lot, it speeds up repetitive edits). Are there any other IDEs that implement these QOL features, including Void (given it touts itself specifically as a Cursor alternative)?
I think QOL will shift away from your keyboard. Give Claude Code a try and you’ll understand what I mean. Developer UX will shift away from traditional IDEs. At this point I could use notepad for the the type of manual work I do vs how I orchestrate Claude Code.
This is a good question. Because we're open source, we will always allow you to host models locally for free, or use your own API key. This makes monetization a bit difficult in the short term. As with many devtool companies, the long-term value comes from enterprise sales.
As a data scientist, my main gripe with all these AI-centric IDEs is that they don’t provide data centric tools for exploring complex data structures inherent to data science. AI cannot tell me about my data, only my code.
I’ll be sticking with VSCode until:
- Notebooks are first class objects. I develop Python packages but notebooks are essential for scratch work in data centric workflows
- I can explore at least 2D data structures interactively (including parquet). The Data Wrangler in VSCode is great for this
A trajectory question: do we still have the debate that whether open-source software takes away SDE jobs or makes the pie grow bigger to create more jobs? The booming OS community in the past seem have created multiple billion-dollar markets. On the other hand, we have a lot less growth than before now, and I was wondering if OSS has started to suppressing the demand of SDEs.
As others have mentioned please add more docs / details to the README
I want to mention my current frustration with cursor recently and why I would love an OSS alternative that gives me control; I feel cursor has dumped agentic capabilities everywhere, regardless of whether the user wants it or not. When I use the Ask function as opposed to Agent, it seems to still be functioning in an agentic loop. It takes longer to have basic conversations about high level ideas and really kills my experience.
I hope void doesn’t become an agent dumping ground where this behavior is thrust upon the user as much as possible
Not to say I dislike agent mode, but I like to choose when I use it.
How is it that the open source Cursor 'alternative' doesn't have a linux option (either via AppImage, as Cursor offers, or something like a flatpak). I understand that open source does not automatically mean linux, but it is like, weird right?
Projects like this are great because open source versions need to figure out the right way to do things, rather than the hacky, closed, proprietary alternatives that pop up first and are just trying to consume as many users as possible to get a most quickly.
In that case, a shitty, closed system is good actually because it's another thing your users will need to "give up" if they move to an alternative. By contrast, an open ide like void will hopefully make headway on an open interface between ides and the llm agents in such a way that it can be adapted by neovim people like me or anyone else for that matter
I wonder why most agentic patterns don't use multiple different retrieval strategies simultaneously and why most of them don't use CodeGraph 1 during discovery phase. Embeddings aren't enough, Agent induced function/class name search isn't enough.
Not sure if this feedback is useful but I personally tried Void this morning for about 10 mins on a flutter project (after connecting all the various extensions and keys, which was completely painless).
However, I uninstalled due to the sounds it made! A constant clicking for some (unannounced) background work is bizarre choice for any serious development environment.
Something I was thinking — if Microsoft keeps locking things down for forks (which they sorta are), I wonder if the Void devs would ever pivot to forking other editors like Zed, or if they’re just gonna keep charging headfirst into the wave.
On a tangent, I get the feeling that the more senior you are, the less likely you are to end up using one of these VIDEs. If you do use any coding assistants at all, it will mostly be for the auto-complete feature - no 'agent mode' malarkey.
Maybe it's just me, but the auto-complete is very distracting and something I avoid. Most of the time I'm fighting it, deleting or denying it's suggestions, and it throws me out of flow.
From what I've seen, most senior/staff-level engineers are working for big corps which have limited contracts with providers like Github Copilot, which until recently only gave access to autocomplete.
I prefer the web-based interface. It feels like my choice to reference a tool. It's easy to run multiple chats at once, running prompts against multiple models.
When browsing a GitHub repo, there's an option for "assistive chat" with copilot. -- I've found this a useful interface to get the LLM to answer quick questions about the repository without having to dig through myself.
Beyond autocomplete, I've found the LLM to be useful in some cases: sometimes you'll want to make edits which are quite automatic, but can't quite be covered by refactoring tools, and are a bit more involved than search/replace. LLMs can handle that quite well.
For unfamiliar domains, it's also useful to be able to ask an LLM to troubleshoot / identify problems in code.
I think it's really interesting that Void (and Zed) are both much more tastefully designed than Cursor, Windsurf or VSCode (though I wouldn't have expected VSCode to be well designed)
I subscribed to the mailing list of void long ago to be notified once the alpha opens, but i've never recieved anything. I forgot about it until today.
Anyway, I didn't know what your service was trying to do so I clicked on the homepage, clicked Sources to see what else was there, it cited <https://extraakt.com/extraakts?source=reddit#:~:text=Open-so...> but the hyperlink took me back to the HN thing, which defeats the purpose of having a source picker
Mandatory reminder that "agentic coding" works way worse than just using the LLM directly, steering it ad needed, filling the gaps, and so forth. The value is in the semantical capabilities of the LLM itself: wrapping it will make it more convenient to use, but always less powerful.
I beg to disagree, Salvatore... Have a go at VS Code with Agent mode turned on (you'll need a paid plan to use Claude and/or Gemini, I think). It gets me out of vim, so yeah, it's that good. :)
Tip: Write a SPEC.md file first. Ask the LLM to ask _you_ about what might be missing from the spec, and once you "agree" ask it to update the SPEC.md or create a TODO.md.
Then iterate on the code. Ask it to implement one of the features, hand-tune and ask it to check things against the SPEC.md and update both files as needed.
Works great for me, especially when refactoring--the SPEC.md grounds Claude enough for it not to go off-road. Gemini is a bit more random...
they always start as open source to bait users. how long until this one also turns into BaitWare? I hope it won't since it's backed by Y Combinator and has an Apache 2 license.
(Edit: the parent comment was edited to add "I hope it won't since it's backed by Y Combinator and has an Apache 2 license." - that's a good redirection, and I probably wouldn't have posted a mod reply if the comment had had that originally.)
(Btw if your comment already has replies, it is good to add "Edit:" or something if you're changing it in a way that will alter the context of replies.)
---
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
They first need to substantially grow the user base as we saw with OpenWebUI, only then make an Enterprise offering and switch the license from one day to another.
If I move off Cursor, it's def not going to be to another vs-code derivative.
Zed has it right - build it from the ground up, otherwise, MS is going to kneecap you at some point.
Zed didn't build from the ground up though. I mean, they did for a lot of stuff, but crucially they decided to rely on the LSP ecosystem so most of the investment in improving Zed is also a direct investment in improving VSCode.
If you can't invest in yourself without making the same size investment in your competitor, you probably have no path to actually win out over that competitor.
Additionally, Zed is written in Rust and has robust hardware-accelerated rendering. This has a tangible feel that other editors do not. It feels just so smooth, unlike clunky heavyweight JetBrains products. And it feels solid and sturdy, unlike VS Code buffers, which feel like creaky webviews.
But it's a different take, Brokk is built to let humans supervise AI more effectively rather than optimizing for humans reading and writing code by hand. So it's not a VS Code fork, it's not really an IDE in the traditional sense at all.
1. Create a branch called TaskForLLM_123
2. Add a file with text instructions called Instructions_TaskForLLM_123.txt
3. Have a GitHub action read the branch, perform the task and then submit a PR.
Watched your Youtube. I love this - will try it out and give it to our team. This is effectively the "full mode" version of the mode I currently use Cursor for.
The time to sell a VSCode fork for 3B was a week ago. If someone wants to move off of VSCode, why would they move to a fork of it instead of to Zed, JetBrains, or a return to the terminal?
Next big sale is going to be something like "Chrome Fork + AI + integrated inter-app MCP". Brave is eh, Arc is being left to die on its own, and Firefox is... doing nothing.
Feedback 1: The README really needs more details. What does it do/not do? Don't assume people have used Cursor. If it is a Cursor alternative, does it support all of Cursor's features?
As a non-Cursor user who does AI programming, there is nothing there to make me want to try it out.
Feedback 2: I feel any new agentic AI tool for programming should have a comparison against Aider[1] which for me is the tool to benchmark against. Can you give a compelling reason to use this over Aider? Don't just say "VSCode" - I'm sure there are extensions for VSCode that work with Aider.
As an example of the questions I have:
- Does it have something like Aider's repomap (or better)?
- To what granularity can I limit the context?
[1] https://aider.chat/
Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely add a feature list. To answer your question, yes - we support Cursor's features (quick edits, agent mode, chat, inline edits, links to files/folders, fast apply, etc) using open source and openly-available models (for example, we haven't trained our own autocomplete model, but you can bring any autocomplete model or "FIM" model).
We don't have a repomap or codebase summary - right now we're relying on .voidrules and Gather/Agent mode to look around to implement large edits, and we find that works decently well, although we might add something like an auto-summary or Aider's repomap before exiting Beta.
Regarding context - you can customize the context window and reserved amount of token space for each model. You can also use "@ to mention" to include entire files and folders, limited to the context window length. (you can also customize the model's reasoning ability, think tags to parse, tool use format (gemini/openai/anthropic), FIM support, etc).
I've used both Cursor and Aider but I've always wanted something simple that I have full control on, if not just to understand how they work. So I made a minimal coding agent (with edit capability) that is fully functional using only seven tools: read, write, diff, browse, command, ask, and think.
I can just disable `ask` tool for example to have it easily go full autonomous on certain tasks.
Have a look at https://github.com/aperoc/toolkami to see if it might be useful for you.
> The README really needs more details. What does it do/not do? Don't assume people have used Cursor. If it is a Cursor alternative, does it support all of Cursor's features?
That's all in the website, not the README, but yes a bulleted list or identical info from the site would work well.
Am I the only one that has had bad experiences with aider? For me each time I've tried it, I had to wrestle with and beg the AI to do what I wanted it to do, almost always ending in me just taking over and doing it myself.
If nearly everytime I use it to accomplish something it gets it 40-85% correct and I have to go in to fix the other 60-15%, what is the point? It's as slow as hand writing code then, if not slower, and my flow with Continue is simply better:
1. CTRL L block of code 2. Ask a question or give a task 3. I read what it says and then apply the change myself by CTRL C and then tweaking the one or two little things it inevitably misunderstood about my system and its requirements
[dead]
It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. Curious how this compares to others like Cline, VS Code Copilot's Agent mode, Roo Code, Kilo Code, Zed, etc. Not to mention those that are closed source, CLI based, etc. Any standout features?
Void dev here! The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, and we think that's because they simply feel better to use by having more control over the UX.
There are certainly a lot of alternatives that are plugins(!), but our differentiation right now is being a full open source IDE and having all the features you get out of the big players (quick edits, agent mode, autocomplete, checkpoints).
Surprisingly, all of the big IDEs today (Cursor/Windsurf/Copilot) send your messages through their backend whenever you send a message, and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). Your connection to providers is direct with Void, and it's a lot easier to spin up your own models/providers and host locally or use whatever provider you want.
We're planning on building Git branching for agents in the next iteration when LLMs are more independent, and controlling the full IDE experience for that will be really important. I worry plugins will struggle.
My 2c: I rarely need agent mode. As an older engineer, I usually know what exactly needs to be done and have no problem describing to the LLM what to do to solve what I'm aiming to do. Agent mode seems its more for novice developers who are unsure what tasks need to be broken down and the strategy that they are then solved.
Coding agents are the future and it's anyone's game right now.
The main reason I think there is such a proliferation is it's not clear what the best interface to coding agents will be. Is it in Slack and Linear? Is it on the CLI? Is it a web interface with a code editor? Is it VS Code or Zed?
Just like everyone has their favored IDE, in a few years time, I think everyone will have their favored interaction pattern for coding agents.
Product managers might like Devin because they don't need to setup an environment. Software engineers might still prefer Cursor because they want to edit the code and run tests on their own.
Cursor has a concept of a shadow workspace and I think we're going to see this across all coding agents. You kick off an async task in whatever IDE you use and it presents the results of the agent in an easy to review way a bit later.
As for Void, I think being open source is valuable on it's own. My understanding is Microsoft could enforce license restrictions at some point down the road to make Cursor difficult to use with certain extensions.
Another YC backed open source VS Code is Continue: https://www.continue.dev/
(Caveat: I am a YC founder building in this space: https://www.engines.dev/)
> It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days.
For real. I think it's because code editors seem to be in that perfect intersection of:
- A tool for programmers. Programmers like building for programmers.
- A tool for productivity. Companies will pay for productivity.
- A tool that's clearly AI-able. VC's will invest in AI tools.
- A tool with plenty of open source lift. The clear, common (and extreme?) example of this being forking VSCode.
Add to that the recent purchase of VSCode-fork [1] Windsurf for $3 billion [2] and I suspect we will see many more of these.
[1]: https://windsurf.com/blog/why-we-built-windsurf#:~:text=This...
[2]: https://community.openai.com/t/openai-is-acquiring-windsurf-...
The weird thing is, the biggest reason I don't use Cursor much is because they just distribute this AppImage, which doesn't install or add itself to the Ubuntu app menu, it just sits there and I have to do
and then I get greeted with an error message: I have to go Googling, then realize I have to run it with Often I'm lazy to do all of this and just use the Claude / ChatGPT web version and paste code back and forth to VS code.The effort required to start Cursor is the reason I don't use it much. VS code is an actual, bona fide installed app with an icon that sits on my screen, I just click it to launch it. So much easier. Even if I have to write code manually.
Void has been around since last year.
I'm working on an agnostic unified framework to make contexts transferrable between these tools.
This will permit zero friction, zero interruption transitions without any code modification.
Should have something to show by next week.
Hit me up if you're interested in working on this problem - I'm tired of cowboying my projects.
I've tried many of AI coding IDE's, the best ones like RooCode are good simply because they don't gimp your context. The modern day models are already more then capable enough for many coding tasks, you just need to leave them alone and let them utilize their full context window and all will go well. If you hear a bad experience with any of these IDE's, most of the time its because its limiting use of context or improper management of related functions.
Yup - honestly the space is so open right now still, everyone is trying haha. It's got quite hard to keep track of different models and their strengths / weaknesses, much less the IDE and editor space! I have no idea which of these AI editors would suite me best and a new one comes out like every day.
I'm still in vim with copilot and know I'm missing out. Anyway I'm also adding to the problem as I've got my own too (don't we all?!), at https://codeplusequalsai.com. Coded in vim 'cause I can't decide on an editor!
You forgot the best one to compare against - Claude Code.
The difference is this one is backed by Y Combinator.
There's so much happening in this space, but I still haven't seen what would be the killer feature for me: dual-mode operation in IDE and CLI.
In a project where I already have a lot of linting brought into the editor, I want to be able to reuse that linting in a headless mode: start something at the CLI, then hop into the IDE when it says it's done or needs help. I'd be able to see the conversation up to that point and the agent would be able to see my linting errors before I start using it in the IDE. For a large, existing codebase that will require a lot of guardrails for an agent to be successful, it's disheartening to imagine splitting customization efforts between separate CLI and IDE tools.
For me so far, cursor's still the state of the art. But it's hard to go all-in on it if I'll also have to go all-in on a CLI system in parallel. Do any of the tools that are coming out have the kind of dual-mode operation I'm interested in? There's so many it's hard to even evaluate them all.
I posted this the other day, but didn't get a response:
Does anyone think this model of "tool" + "curated model aggregator" + "open source" would be useful for other, non-developer fields? For instance, would an AI art tool with sculpting and drawing benefit from being open source?
I've talked with VCs that love open source developer tools, but they seem to hate on the idea of "open creative tools" for designers, illustrators, filmmakers, and other creatives. They say these folks don't benefit from open source. I don't quite get it, because Blender and Krita have millions of users. (ComfyUI is already kind of in that space, it's just not very user-friendly.)
Why do investors seem to want non-developer things to be closed source? Are they right?
Zed (https://zed.dev/agentic) also released agentic code edits (similar to Cursor) which I tried and really like.
Its agent is a lot worse than Cursor's in my experience so far. Even tab edits feel worse.
My understanding is that these are not custom models but a combination of prompting and steering. That makes Cursor's performance relative to others pretty surprising to me. Are they just making more requests? I wonder what the secret sauce is.
And it's not yet another editor running in a web browser which is really, really nice.
One thing I noticed is that there's no cost tracking, so it's very hard to predict how much you're spending. This is fine on tools like Cursor that are all inclusive, but is something that is really necessary if you're bringing your own API keys.
Is this feature on the roadmap?
This is a great suggestion. We're actually storing the input/output costs of most models, but aren't computing cost estimates yet. Definitely something to add. My only hesitation is that token-based cost estimates may not be accurate (most models do not provide their tokenizers, so you have to eg. estimate the average number of characters per token in order to compute the cost, and this may vary per model).
This is very cool and I'm always happy to see more competition in this space. That said, two suggestions:
- The logo looks like it was inspired directly from the Cursor logo and modified slightly. I would suggest changing it.
- It might be wise to brand yourself as your own thing, not just an "open source Cursor". I tend to have the expectation that "open source [X]" projects are worse than "[X]". Probably unfair, I know.
Thanks for the suggestions - these issues have been a bit painful for us, and we will probably fix them in the next major update to Void.
Believe it or not, the logo similarity was actually unintentional, though I imagine there was subconscious bias at play (we created ours trying to illustrate "a slice of the Void").
A minor counterpoint, I personally like the "open source Xyz" because I instantly know what the product is supposed to do. It's also very SEO friendly because you don't know the name of the open source version before you find it, so you can Kagi/Google/DDG "open source Cursor" and get it as a top result, instead of a sea of spammy slime.
Is there some benefit from forking vscode instead of creating an extension?
Void dev here! As others have mentioned, VSCode strongly limits the functionality that you can build as an extension. A few things we've built that aren't supported as an extension: - the Accept|Reject UI and UX - Cmd+K - Control over the terminal and tabs - Custom autocomplete - Smaller things like ability to open/close the sidebar, onboarding, etc
It's been a lot harder to build an IDE than an extension, but we think having full control over the IDE (whether that's VSCode or something else we build in the future) will be important in the long run, especially when the next iteration of tool-use LLMs comes out (having native control over Git, the UI/UX around switching between iterations, etc).
As an (ex) VSCode extension developer, VSCode really does lock down what you can do as an extension. It's well intentioned and likely led to the success of VSCode, but it's not great if you want to build entirely new UI interactions. For instance, something like the cmd-k inline generation UI in Cursor is basically impossible as a VSCode extension.
People keep saying that the extensions API is too limited or something, but Cline seems to manage fine with being an extension.
One of the big _disadvantages_ is that it prevents access to the VSCode-licensed plugins, such as the good C# LSP (seems EEE isn't completely dead). That's something to pay attention to if you're considering a fork and use an affected language.
I wish all these companies the best and I understand why they’re forking, but personally I really don’t want my main IDE maintained by a startup, especially as a fork. I use Cursor, and I’ve run into a number of bugs at the IDE level that have nothing to do with the AI features. I imagine this is only going to get worse over time.
It gets them more slop funding if they can say they have an “AI IDE”.
I've just installed it and tried to have it create a hello world using gemma3:27b-it-qat through ollama but it refused to do it claiming it doesn't have access to my filesystem.
Then I opened an existing file and asked it to modify a function to return a fixed value and it did the same.
I'm an absolute newb in this space so if I'm doing something stupid I'd appreciate it if you helped me correct it because I already had the C/C++ extension complain that it can only be used in "proper vscode" (I imported my settings from vscode using the wizard) and when this didn't work either it didn't spark joy as Marie Kondo would say.
Please don't get me wrong, I gave this a try because I like the idea of having a proper local open source IDE where I can run my own models (even if it's slower) and have control over my data. I'm genuinely interested in making this work.
Thanks!
Thanks for writing! Can you try mentioning the file with "@"? Smaller models sometimes don't realize that they should look for files and folders, but "@" always gives the full context of whatever is in the file/folder directly to them.
Small OSS models are going to get better at this when there's more of a focus on tool-use, which we're expecting in the next iteration of models.
May I ask why did you decide against starting with (Eclipse) Theia instead of VSCode?
It's compatible but has better integration and modularity, and doing so might insulate you a bit from your rather large competitor controlling your destiny.
Or is the exit to be bought by Microsoft? By OpenAI? And thus to more closely integrate?
If you're open-source but derivative, can they not simply steal your ideas? Or will your value depend on having a lasting hold on your customers?
I'm really happy there are full-fledged IDE alternatives, but I find the hub-and-spoke model where VSCode/MS is the only decider of integration patterns is a real problem. LSP has been a race to the bottom, feature-wise, though it really simplified IDE support for small languages.
Related:
Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41563958 - Sept 2024 (154 comments)
I mostly use Cursor for the monthly flat pricing which allows me unlimited (slow) calls to most LLMs (Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude 3.7, etc) without worrying about spending anything more than $20/month.
Really interesting from a 'in a bubble' point of view. I've been using Void for the past few weeks as a replacement for Bolt, Lovable, Tempo and the rest. Which is nothing like the use cases mentioned in this thread. Just shows how we're each focused on different parts of an environment? Of course I'm not a programmer, I'm just a slash-and-hack vibe coder. :)
For the record, I really like Void. It's great at utilising local models, which no-one else does. Although I'd love to know which are the best Ollama local coding models. I've failed with a few so the moment I'm sticking to Sonnet 3.7 and GPT 4.1. With 03 as the 'big daddy'. :)
I'm also a fan because it's open source, which is really needed in this space I feel. One question for the devs, what do you think about this? https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/vs-code-forks-are-facing-a-grim
Given that there's a dozen agentic coding IDEs, I only use Cursor because of the few features they have like auto-identification of the next cursor location (I find myself hitting tab-tab-tab-tab a lot, it speeds up repetitive edits). Are there any other IDEs that implement these QOL features, including Void (given it touts itself specifically as a Cursor alternative)?
I think QOL will shift away from your keyboard. Give Claude Code a try and you’ll understand what I mean. Developer UX will shift away from traditional IDEs. At this point I could use notepad for the the type of manual work I do vs how I orchestrate Claude Code.
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Given Void is backed by Ycombinator, what’s the business plan to start generating revenue?
There is no plan with YC in this space, everything is just basically vibe investing and hoping something sticks.
Continue.dev also received investment from YC. Remember PearAI? Very charismatic founders that just forked Continue.dev and got a YC investment [1].
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/20/after-causing-outrage-on-t...
This is a good question. Because we're open source, we will always allow you to host models locally for free, or use your own API key. This makes monetization a bit difficult in the short term. As with many devtool companies, the long-term value comes from enterprise sales.
We need an Eval Leaderboard for LLM assisted Agentic IDEs. The space is getting crowded:
New Editors:
- Firebase Studio
- Zed
- OpenHands (OSS Devin Clone)
VS Code Forks:
- Cursor
- Windsurf Editor
- Void
VS Code Extensions:
- Gemini Code Assist
- Continue.dev
- GitHub Copilot Agent Mode
- Cline
- RooCode
- Kilo Code (RooCode + Cline Fork)
- Windsurf Plugin
- Kodu.ai Claude Coder (not claude code!)
Terminal Agents:
- Aider
- Claude Code
- OpenAI codex
Issue Fixing Agents:
- SWE-agent
Missing OpenAI Codex cli
Also missing a class of non-IDE desktop apps like 16x Prompt and Repo Prompt.
There is also Trae - vscode fork from bytedance
JetBrains Junie
As a data scientist, my main gripe with all these AI-centric IDEs is that they don’t provide data centric tools for exploring complex data structures inherent to data science. AI cannot tell me about my data, only my code.
I’ll be sticking with VSCode until:
- Notebooks are first class objects. I develop Python packages but notebooks are essential for scratch work in data centric workflows
- I can explore at least 2D data structures interactively (including parquet). The Data Wrangler in VSCode is great for this
I saw recently a framework that was interacting directly with notebook. But I forgot what was it. Everyday there is a new thing.
A trajectory question: do we still have the debate that whether open-source software takes away SDE jobs or makes the pie grow bigger to create more jobs? The booming OS community in the past seem have created multiple billion-dollar markets. On the other hand, we have a lot less growth than before now, and I was wondering if OSS has started to suppressing the demand of SDEs.
As others have mentioned please add more docs / details to the README
I want to mention my current frustration with cursor recently and why I would love an OSS alternative that gives me control; I feel cursor has dumped agentic capabilities everywhere, regardless of whether the user wants it or not. When I use the Ask function as opposed to Agent, it seems to still be functioning in an agentic loop. It takes longer to have basic conversations about high level ideas and really kills my experience.
I hope void doesn’t become an agent dumping ground where this behavior is thrust upon the user as much as possible
Not to say I dislike agent mode, but I like to choose when I use it.
How is it that the open source Cursor 'alternative' doesn't have a linux option (either via AppImage, as Cursor offers, or something like a flatpak). I understand that open source does not automatically mean linux, but it is like, weird right?
just looked and it does https://github.com/voideditor/binaries/releases
AppImage, .deb, .tar.gz
No, not really. It's not really your place to dictate what someone enjoys working on.
Projects like this are great because open source versions need to figure out the right way to do things, rather than the hacky, closed, proprietary alternatives that pop up first and are just trying to consume as many users as possible to get a most quickly.
In that case, a shitty, closed system is good actually because it's another thing your users will need to "give up" if they move to an alternative. By contrast, an open ide like void will hopefully make headway on an open interface between ides and the llm agents in such a way that it can be adapted by neovim people like me or anyone else for that matter
Side note: is there an AI app that sets up a full initial SaaS app based on prompts? I'm struggling to get something like Cursor to behave correctly.
Not exactly what you're asking but: have you tried some Boilerplate SaaS thing?
vibe coding oriented builders, where you draft an app idea and it gives you a prototype?
I'd say Firebase Studio and OpenHands
I wonder why most agentic patterns don't use multiple different retrieval strategies simultaneously and why most of them don't use CodeGraph 1 during discovery phase. Embeddings aren't enough, Agent induced function/class name search isn't enough.
[1] CodeGraph https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13863
Not sure if this feedback is useful but I personally tried Void this morning for about 10 mins on a flutter project (after connecting all the various extensions and keys, which was completely painless).
However, I uninstalled due to the sounds it made! A constant clicking for some (unannounced) background work is bizarre choice for any serious development environment.
Has anyone had success running it on NixOS? I have an account with deepinfra which I'd like to try with this.
Sadly when I try to add a model, I get the error: > Error while encrypting the text provided to safeStorage.encryptString. Encryption is not available
vscode and Cursor work perfectly fine this way:
> nix-shell -p appimage-run > [nix-shell:~/Downloads]$ appimage-run Cursor-0.49.6-x86_64.AppImage
I've got a great setup going with Emacs and Aidermacs[1]. I just can't stand using VS Code, it's impossible to configure to my liking.
[1]: https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs
what sorts of things are hard to configure?
My setup: vim -> ctrl + z -> claude -> ctrl + c -> fg
Been following this project from very earlier on. It's awesome to see how much ground you covered in just a few months!
What we need is not an editor. We need a coding agent server which we can use from any editor we want.
There's aider (https://aider.chat) or Claude Code (https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview) or Codex (https://github.com/openai/codex) or plandex (https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex) or kwaak (https://github.com/bosun-ai/kwaak)
I'd venture to say there's more of these than there are UI Editors tbh.
Something I was thinking — if Microsoft keeps locking things down for forks (which they sorta are), I wonder if the Void devs would ever pivot to forking other editors like Zed, or if they’re just gonna keep charging headfirst into the wave.
On a tangent, I get the feeling that the more senior you are, the less likely you are to end up using one of these VIDEs. If you do use any coding assistants at all, it will mostly be for the auto-complete feature - no 'agent mode' malarkey.
Would you say this is true?
Maybe it's just me, but the auto-complete is very distracting and something I avoid. Most of the time I'm fighting it, deleting or denying it's suggestions, and it throws me out of flow.
From what I've seen, most senior/staff-level engineers are working for big corps which have limited contracts with providers like Github Copilot, which until recently only gave access to autocomplete.
I prefer the web-based interface. It feels like my choice to reference a tool. It's easy to run multiple chats at once, running prompts against multiple models.
When browsing a GitHub repo, there's an option for "assistive chat" with copilot. -- I've found this a useful interface to get the LLM to answer quick questions about the repository without having to dig through myself.
Beyond autocomplete, I've found the LLM to be useful in some cases: sometimes you'll want to make edits which are quite automatic, but can't quite be covered by refactoring tools, and are a bit more involved than search/replace. LLMs can handle that quite well.
For unfamiliar domains, it's also useful to be able to ask an LLM to troubleshoot / identify problems in code.
Can you use OpenRouter with this?
Yes, you can bring OpenRouter or any other provider and connect directly! (We don't route your messages through a backend like others).
Yes at onboarding asks for gemini and openrouter keys
and pay 5% commission? no thanks.
I think it's really interesting that Void (and Zed) are both much more tastefully designed than Cursor, Windsurf or VSCode (though I wouldn't have expected VSCode to be well designed)
If this isn’t as good as or better than Avante.nvim, I’m going to be quite sad.
This is realy cool and checks my privacy boxes, great name too. I will be testing it out and will consider contributing.
One thing i'd really like to have is a manual order for folders or even files in the explorer view.
Can you tell me what's the difference between this and Continue?
Any particular reason why they forked VSCode and not Theia?
Nobody uses Theia, relatively speaking.
I subscribed to the mailing list of void long ago to be notified once the alpha opens, but i've never recieved anything. I forgot about it until today.
We've been holding off on this until Void is out of Beta.
Sad to see it's just VScode over and over again. I would prefer a good editor first.
Would be helpful for you to be in homebrew.
The irony of an open source alternative to a fork of an open source project is hopefully not lost here
Disappointing name! You are colliding with https://voidlinux.org/ among probably many other much more significant pieces of software.
fwiw here's a more structured/organized version of this thread: https://extraakt.com/extraakts/void-ai-coding-tool-discussio...
"Structured," eh?
Anyway, I didn't know what your service was trying to do so I clicked on the homepage, clicked Sources to see what else was there, it cited <https://extraakt.com/extraakts?source=reddit#:~:text=Open-so...> but the hyperlink took me back to the HN thing, which defeats the purpose of having a source picker
If this supports connecting with locally hosted models this is actually a HUGE deal
I’ve been using Claude coder, I like this exp way more than these ai ides way more.
Oh wow this is nice, will try it out.
Ycombinator backed too I guess Vibe coding is here to stay
> Ycombinator backed too
Oh wow, I didn't even realize. Substantially less appealing of a project to me now.
The branding looks quiet strange and very conflicting with voidzero.dev
We gotta stop making full vscodes, and just make extensions... Bleh
Nice - also open competition is always good for users!
> Welcome to Void.
Flaskbacks to that pretty good Voyager episode.
Make it disable all the telemetry by default
And just that much maot each AI wrapper has.
Congrats void!!
Open source and not available on Linux?
Yeah this surprised me as well lol
Here have 10B$
I bet OpenAI feels kinda silly now that they just paid $3B for Windsurf when they could have backed an OSS one for much less.
Windsurf probably has recurring revenue.
one of these is gonna have malware and we'll wonder how we never saw it
I don't know anything about the project, I use Zed editor, but I think the logo is really cool.
Mandatory reminder that "agentic coding" works way worse than just using the LLM directly, steering it ad needed, filling the gaps, and so forth. The value is in the semantical capabilities of the LLM itself: wrapping it will make it more convenient to use, but always less powerful.
I beg to disagree, Salvatore... Have a go at VS Code with Agent mode turned on (you'll need a paid plan to use Claude and/or Gemini, I think). It gets me out of vim, so yeah, it's that good. :)
Tip: Write a SPEC.md file first. Ask the LLM to ask _you_ about what might be missing from the spec, and once you "agree" ask it to update the SPEC.md or create a TODO.md.
Then iterate on the code. Ask it to implement one of the features, hand-tune and ask it to check things against the SPEC.md and update both files as needed.
Works great for me, especially when refactoring--the SPEC.md grounds Claude enough for it not to go off-road. Gemini is a bit more random...
BYOK
We live in the age of dev tools
https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim/ is another choice.
Another one? People saw that 3B windsurf money.
Here comes another. Everyone saw that 3B Windsurf money and production go brrr
Void actually launched before the Windsurf IDE existed!
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127882
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41563958
VSCode death by a thousand forks.
no linux version? pfft. rookies
they always start as open source to bait users. how long until this one also turns into BaitWare? I hope it won't since it's backed by Y Combinator and has an Apache 2 license.
(Edit: the parent comment was edited to add "I hope it won't since it's backed by Y Combinator and has an Apache 2 license." - that's a good redirection, and I probably wouldn't have posted a mod reply if the comment had had that originally.)
(Btw if your comment already has replies, it is good to add "Edit:" or something if you're changing it in a way that will alter the context of replies.)
---
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Don't be curmudgeonly."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
They first need to substantially grow the user base as we saw with OpenWebUI, only then make an Enterprise offering and switch the license from one day to another.
>how long until this one also turns into BaitWare?
>VSCode Fork.
Already did. Can't wait to hear their super special very important reason why this can't exist as an extension.
If I move off Cursor, it's def not going to be to another vs-code derivative. Zed has it right - build it from the ground up, otherwise, MS is going to kneecap you at some point.
The threat is Msft cutting you off from the ecosystem. That means growing an ecosystem and not merely the editor.
Zed didn't build from the ground up though. I mean, they did for a lot of stuff, but crucially they decided to rely on the LSP ecosystem so most of the investment in improving Zed is also a direct investment in improving VSCode.
If you can't invest in yourself without making the same size investment in your competitor, you probably have no path to actually win out over that competitor.
Great to see more people thinking this way, finally. Would be even better to see the same change wrt typescript, another MS trojan horse.
100%. Microsoft can't interfere with Zed.
Additionally, Zed is written in Rust and has robust hardware-accelerated rendering. This has a tangible feel that other editors do not. It feels just so smooth, unlike clunky heavyweight JetBrains products. And it feels solid and sturdy, unlike VS Code buffers, which feel like creaky webviews.
I created an OSS ai coding platform as well: https://brokk.ai
But it's a different take, Brokk is built to let humans supervise AI more effectively rather than optimizing for humans reading and writing code by hand. So it's not a VS Code fork, it's not really an IDE in the traditional sense at all.
Intro video with demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw92v-uN5xI
Can it run in a GitHub action ?
What I want is to be able to do is.
1. Create a branch called TaskForLLM_123 2. Add a file with text instructions called Instructions_TaskForLLM_123.txt 3. Have a GitHub action read the branch, perform the task and then submit a PR.
Watched your Youtube. I love this - will try it out and give it to our team. This is effectively the "full mode" version of the mode I currently use Cursor for.
Yet another vscode fork…
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Would you please stop posting like this?
We're trying for thoughtful, respectful discussion of people's work on this site. Snarky, nasty oneliners destroy that.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928512.
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The time to sell a VSCode fork for 3B was a week ago. If someone wants to move off of VSCode, why would they move to a fork of it instead of to Zed, JetBrains, or a return to the terminal?
Next big sale is going to be something like "Chrome Fork + AI + integrated inter-app MCP". Brave is eh, Arc is being left to die on its own, and Firefox is... doing nothing.
Why no linux build? It is just vscode in ts right? And it is an electron app right?
We do have a linux build! (the link is at the bottom of the download page). Some systems are a bit finicky so we give more options on setting it up.
There's a link for Linux at the bottom of the download page, which directs to the releases in GitHub
Presumably you could raise a PR...?
https://github.com/voideditor/void#readme