AI agents are used extensively in the development workflow, especially for code review and debugging, but with human engagement to ensure quality.
Nathan Sobo describes how the Zed team uses AI agents extensively in their workflow, particularly for interpreting diffs during code reviews and getting a head start on stack traces, while maintaining human engagement to ensure quality. ✦ AI generated
Nathan Sobo · Syntax · 2026-08-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 16:25
“I'm I'm curious about like we always in this day and age need to ask about like AI usage in building these things. Like what's AI usage for the Zed team look like?”
we use AI a lot. Um at least I do, and I think it just it varies across the team and obviously most of the well, everybody on the team is an engineer back from the days when you didn't have an agent to write any code for you. You were typing it out and you know, you were lucky if you could get a auto complete. Um so, I'm really glad that I have that pre-training of my neurons in place to really understand software. Like I I think it would be a different story if I were getting my start now. Some things would be easier and then certain kinds of lessons might be harder. Um but I I write a ton of code agentically these days. Um and I used it in the pull request review process. When I'm reviewing pull requests, it's amazing to get some help interpreting what the heck is going on in this diff.
verbatim transcript · starts at 16:25
16:25most of the well, everybody on the team is an engineer back from the days when you didn't have an agent to write any code for you. You were typing it out and you know, you were lucky if you could get an auto complete. Um so, I'm really glad that I have that pre-training of my neurons in place to really understand software. Like I I think it would be a different story if I
16:47were getting my start now. Some things would be easier and then certain kinds of lessons might be harder. Um but I I write a ton of code agentically these days. Um and I used it in the pull request review process. When I'm reviewing pull requests, it's amazing to get some help interpreting what the heck is going on in this diff. One thing we don't have a ton of is like
17:14this dark factory thing uh where there's like loops and things going on super autonomously. Um, we have a little of that happening like you know, just getting a head start on stack traces and things of that nature. Um, but for the most part um, definitely my usage of AI is extremely engaged and reading the majority of the output coming out of the thing and yeah, being very engaged with it. So
17:46uh, but it's a big part of my workflow. It's changed the calculus a bit. Like there's a the volume of contributions we're having to get much more clear about what we're going to accept and not and you know and review the review load is uh, quite a lot to keep up with especially with a bunch of other priorities going on. Yeah. Um, but I don't know, we get like 40 something
18:10bugs a week >> Wow. >> fixed via external contributions. I'm sure a lot of those were facilitated by agents. I don't begrudge people for getting leverage especially in a code base as complex as that. You do have to insta close the slop ones that someone's not putting care into what they're doing. Um, but yeah, it's a big part of it and I don't have anything against it.