Cursor is awesome, full stop. However, it’s a currently a bit of a mishmash of features and a bit of magic, whereas, just from watching the videos, things in zed are more fluent, customizable and connected.
In zed you can build context in the chat, and then iteratively build out pieces of that in the terminal and editor, and everything can see everything else.
This is lower level than composer, but useful because we need it sometimes. Composer, ctrl k, cursor tab etc should all share some central context, whether that be github tasks or checklist, readme and then more dynamic ones like codebase outlines (I like the recursive fold concept zed has) and then some central place to discuss and build out dynamic context through multiple chats that feed into other features when focused.
Inline transformations in Zed use the context you've built in the assistant panel. There's no hidden system prompt－you see and control every input shaping the model's output. This transparency lets you fine-tune the model's behavior and improve your skills in AI-assisted coding.
This is complementary to composer.
Also, extensions for @ and / would be great.