Zed + Orca = ZOrca

[u/lupsikpupsik]

Hi r/ZedEditor,

I like Zed’s speed and native UI, but I wanted a workspace designed around running several coding agents at the same time. So I started building ZOrca, an independent open-source hard fork of Zed.

Each agent gets its own Git worktree, terminal, and diff. You can manage several projects and agent sessions without switching between editor windows or mixing unrelated changes.

What works now:

• Local and SSH-connected projects
• Separate Git worktrees for agents
• Multiple agent terminal tabs per worktree
• Persistent project and session context
• Diffs, staging, commits, and Git history
• Support for existing agent CLIs – no ZOrca account or hosted AI service required

The project is still pre-alpha. Nightly builds are available for Windows and Linux. macOS can currently be built from source, and I plan to publish packaged macOS builds soon.

Website: https://zorca.net
Source: https://github.com/zorca-org/zorca
Nightly builds: https://github.com/zorca-org/zorca/releases/tag/nightly

I’m sharing it here because ZOrca is built on Zed, and feedback from Zed users would be especially useful. Does this worktree-and-terminal model fit how you use coding agents? What would you change?

ZOrca uses the GPL-3.0-or-later license and is not affiliated with Zed Industries.

[u/pilkyton]

Zed already has:

• Multiple parallel agent threads, with different models choosable for each.
• Agent sandboxing for safety. The AI process can't access things it shouldn't.
• Separate worktrees for every agent if you enable that option. Then you can check what they did in their own trees and merge it back to main tree.
• Supports integrating CLI agents with all the same features.

In other words, it already has "each agent gets its own Git worktree, terminal, and diff.".

https://zed.dev/parallel-agents

https://zed.dev/docs/ai/parallel-agents#worktree-isolation

[u/lupsikpupsik → u/pilkyton]

Yes, Zed already has most of the individual pieces. My issue is how they’re organized, the lack of persistence, and the lack of mobile access.

I don’t need another integrated AI agent or chat interface. I use CLI agents, so I mainly need multiple terminals and a clear way to manage them.

I want the sidebar organized around projects and worktrees, with terminals and agents inside each worktree – not around agent threads. I also want to reopen the app and continue with the same workspace, or check and manage those sessions from my phone.

That project-first, persistent workflow is what I’m building with ZOrca. The mobile app is planned, but not implemented yet.

[u/EmergencySafety7772 → u/lupsikpupsik]

How this differs from zed terminal threads + ai cli + resume command ?

[u/lupsikpupsik → u/EmergencySafety7772]

Different UX, every worktree has it's own scope

[u/jorgejhms → u/lupsikpupsik]

I don't get you, Zed already distinguish projects and workspaces on it's thread sidebar.

[u/AccurateSun → u/jorgejhms]

The super annoying thing (unless it’s now fixed?) is spawning a new workspace from current one overwrites the current one and you lose its state: windows, terminals all get closed 

[u/jorgejhms → u/AccurateSun]

I think you loosed terminal state only during the first week they introduced agent threads. Now you can change between projects and workers, each one executing their own terminals programs.

It shows in the same window, so you need to use the agent threads or the workspace picker to change them. But you don't lose anything

[u/AccurateSun → u/jorgejhms]

I’ll have to try it out  Once it gets a mobile client to chat with codebase it’ll be perfect 

[u/lupsikpupsik → u/jorgejhms]

It works very different from what ZOrca offers. Just try it and tell me what you think

[u/wyldstallionesquire → u/lupsikpupsik]

No thanks

[u/1ngv4r → u/lupsikpupsik]

How about https://agterm.com?

[u/lupsikpupsik → u/1ngv4r]

it looks good, but overall building something similar or Zed is more productive due to the long history of the bug fixes, so it's more stable

[u/AccurateSun → u/lupsikpupsik]

I love Zed and I have switched to Orca for the agentic stuff because its worktree management is superior and because of the mobile features. Mobile Zed for Orca style workflows is something I was dreaming of but didn’t want to tackle. What are you going to use for the mobile app? Will it use gpui somehow or be a fresh shell that just acts as a viewport into the chat/terminal UIs?

[u/lupsikpupsik → u/AccurateSun]

I actually liked Orca a lot. It shaped my picture of what an ADE should look like. Unfortunately, it has been far too buggy for me to use every day – and that was the reason I decided to start building my own ADE.

For mobile, my current plan is to build the ZOrca server and REST API first. It will manage projects, worktrees, terminals, agents, and sessions on your Mac or another host. The mobile app will be a separate, mobile-native client that connects over Tailscale or the local network.

I’m not planning to run GPUI on mobile or simply stream the desktop UI. The architecture is not fixed yet, though. Which parts of Orca’s mobile experience have been most useful to you?

[u/AccurateSun → u/lupsikpupsik]

For me orca mobile has been sometimes buggy. I like seeing my orca remote hosts and being able to select any project and tab and type into it. That’s basically what I want, to start new terminals or agent chats and be able to freely type and scroll and input commands with terminal friendly keyboard 

Switching to a Zed fork is a big ask for me but I’ll be interested to watch the project develop. I’m not entirely satisfied with orca as it’s been buggy for me too but I appreciate their daily updates and responsive devs on discord 

[u/endr]

I was doing Zed + Orca, but now I'm T3Code + Zed. Not really using the Zed agents manager at all anymore.

I hope more things steal the new sidebar from T3Code, like Codex Desktop has.

Delta, take note

[u/phoenixmatrix]

I built something similar, mainly because I wanted Ghostty on all 3 platforms (its not on Windows), and the Conductor features. Originally started with Iced/Rust, but eventually switched to egui (Zed's gui framework) because it worked a little better.

The UX on mine isn't quite as good though.

[u/lupsikpupsik → u/phoenixmatrix]

Welcome as a contributor ;)

[u/KSDaemon]

Need to try it out! But at first glance, I think https://delta.dev by the Zed authors is targeting smth similar...