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As someone who has recently tried to refactor our app atop of VSCode (treating it like a platform), we got burned by the UI design decisions that are not straightforward to overcome, let alone maintain. The closed-source MS marketplace did not help either towards our OSS goals.

However, I found Theia (https://theia-ide.org) on HN (like a bunch of other cool things; this is one way I justify the time I spend/sink on this site) and find it a much better fit for our OSS goals (foundation owned, open-source marketplace) with full mod-ability while being compatible to VSCode extensions API (in theory). I recommend you look into it for your app.

I’d love a good summary on why Cursor, Void (and I assume other tools) decided to build new editors instead of just extending the incumbents (VSCode extension, Jetbrains plugins).

Is there a technical limitation of the extension APIs or is it easier to “market” a new editor than an editor extension?

While adoption for individuals and small companies might be easy, a lot of bigger places already have other integrations with existing IDEs and displacing those for yet another IDE will be a hard ask

Good job at creating more competition, but sorry for being a little bit rude, most software forks die out, try to convince me using this instead of Continue + Claude-dev, which are open source extensions for the vanilla VSCode (or VSCodium).

>Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source

Ehm, Open VSX Registry exists.

Congrats on getting it this far! The fun is just beginning, but it does sound like you have an idea of what you're getting into. Here are some thoughts:

There are quite a few extensions and AI editors offering the snippet-like 'tab autocomplete', but Cursor are the only ones afaik who have nailed the full file no-look 'tab-tab-tab-tab autofix' workflow, with what I assume must be a combination of monaco/vscode hackery similar to what you're doing, and their own tuned model (i.e. not an off-the-shelf llm). Is this the piece you're going after when you say 'all of Cursor's core features', or are you primarily focused on something else?

On the topic of extensions, as an occasional user of Cursor I noticed that they've always been able to quite happily 'import' extensions you've already downloaded to a local VSCode profile, which makes sense, but they've occasionally struggled to use the same marketplace APIs for searching for extensions. I'm not sure what you're hoping for here, but I'd suggest you settle for that approach as a starting point. Also be conscious that you're dealing with Microsoft, so be mindful of things like their brand guidelines[0], and avoid telling the world that you're 'hacking away' at their APIs. These things may seem insignificant and it's true that they probably won't cause you a problem unless you're successful.

Lastly, assuming that you're hoping to recruit contributors (which I assume is some of the motivation behind this post): you really need to sanitise your Github workflow and your repo CI. Your commit history[1] currently seems to mostly consist of you updating your docs and committing straight to your main branch with no review process or checks, and the only commit I can see that does have any kind of check in place, your initial commit, has a failed monaco check that you seem to have subsequently just disabled. You'll need to tidy this up a _lot_ and establish a testing baseline if you want to successfully scale the project or attract the calibre of contributor you'll need to be successful.

Hope that helps, best of luck with the project!

[0]: https://code.visualstudio.com/brand [1]: https://github.com/voideditor/void/commits/main/

I think more competition in the "AI Editor" space is good, but I have to ask – why not make it a VSCode extension? I feel it'd be much more accessible.

Are there limitations in the extension APIs that make it hard to implement?

Do you need to "own" the whole editor to do what you're doing? Just maintaining sync with upstream is a massive rod for your own back, and I don't see what you gain. As others have said, alternative registries exist, and installation instructions of standalone plugins are easier on users than downloading and installing a whole editor.

Can't you just do your own "Copilot" extension and plumb in an instance to ollama? Isn't that what Continue does? https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Continue...

So early stage that we can't download it? Why would I want to join a discord server for a code editor?

What is the plan when VS Code introduces all your features?

there is also PearAI - "The Open Source AI-Powered Code Editor. A fork of VSCode and Continue." [0]. It's getting very crowded in this space: cursor.sh, continue.dev, double.bot, supermaven, codium.ai, PearAI and now Void.

[0] - https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app

I wish someone would fork Omnivim2 instead in order to better compete with VS Code. The editor looks like VS Code, but it is natively compiled and supports VS Code plugins is my understanding. Unfortunately the project seems abandoned. Its coded in ReasonML.

I'm sick of dev tools being built around web browsers. We used to have fully native apps in the 90s and 00s that didn't require so much complexity compared to today.

Edit:

Forgot to mention that it also is powered by vim under the hood, but that's a strength in my eyes.

https://github.com/onivim/oni2

Seems to be a dupe of another Show HN post posted by the same user 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41523197

I'm surprised no one in targeting Jetbrains IDEs as seriously as Cursor has targeted vscode.

I'd imagine Jetbrains users are much more willing to pay, and the non-AI intelligence Webstorm has baked in save me almost as much cognitive load as Cursor does if not more compared to base vscode.

I tried Continue but it wasn't very smooth at all.

Plus points if keeping the tool free for home/OSS users and then charge for corporate or on-premise deployments.

One critical question to the users:

Is Void able to understand the source code files from the project as a whole?

What I mean is being able to read the project, and then make suggestions based on the code that was written and propose new functions? For example, I would see it as fantastic to write unit tests where I'd say: "Please write a unit test that is verifying the functions on ABC.class" or "update the unit tests for ABC.class".

I know it is difficult for an LLM to create a valid result on the first try, but at least it does same me a lot of time creating a skeleton with most of the functions and samples already there. Most times just have to fine tune or fix a few parts but can say it amplifies my output speed by at least 10x to have that kind of functionality.

What is your impression? Can it read all source code files on the project?

This is cool! I'm a regular user of Cursor (I barely write any code now - just prompt and tab tab tab).

The thing that's really keeping me in Cursor (vs decamping for Zed) is NOT the Cmd K or the sidebar chat. It's actual Cursor's Tab autocomplete model. I've tried many other tab completion models and Cursor Tab blows them out of the water. Supermaven's new release is promising, however.

For the use-case you're solving for (issues with code-privacy), I think something like https://codeium.com/ does already allow for on-prem deployments with enterprise support. I'm trying to think of who would be served well by a fork of VSCode vs Continue.dev or something like a codeium VPS deployment.

> All of the code is OOP-based, and they mount DOM nodes the old-school way (which is what React was supposed to solve..)

I don't know about VS Code, but I remember Atom was refactored to use manual DOM updates because the performance penalty of using React wasn't worth it.[1] By the way, isn't OOP by far the most popular paradigm for building desktop UIs? I imagine VS Code is a difficult codebase to work with that has a lot of intricate code (as is usually the case with large software projects), but that's a strange piece of criticism :-)

1. https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624

My projects aren’t super complicated and just mostly Python/flask/htmx/html templates. I started with cursor during their free trial so I got the 500 sonnet prompts and it was pretty awesome. Then that ended and the remaining “free” models were fairly lacking.

So I went a’hunting, and settled on the Codeium vscode plug-in free plan which while not as good as cursor/sonnet combination but is quite capable and their “free” models are capable enough for what I am working on (believe they even use a llama 3.1 model— I think they have various models, but left it on the “base model” and it’s been pretty good)

Why is there a waiting list if it's open source?

Hi, thanks for sharing. A question: What is the advantage of this approach compared to the tool I'm using right now - continue.dev ?

If anyone can point in the direction of a Cursor like experience, but within Neovim, I'm definitely in the market for that option.

Oh, I’m yet to find a good alternative to Cursor’s RAG-powered side chat. It helps me work with huge codebases so much. Tried Continue, but it’s very unstable, and doesn’t work as well. Would prefer a command line solution, vscode plugin is the next choice, having a separate editor is not ideal, but I’m glad there’s some competition.

But why does it have to be a VSCode fork? Couldn’t it be a VSCode plugin?

When I see "Waitlist" and "Discord" on a website, my immediate reaction is to close the tab and forget about the project.

And well, complain about it on hn obviously.

> Any LLM, Anywhere.

> Host your own models locally, or communicate directly with your favorites.

Looks fantastic, will happily try this!

Hey congrats on the release. I don't have much to add other than to ask for more context about this statement-

> allowing AI to edit multiple files at once

Cursor already modifies multiple files at the same time. I typically do this by pressing cmd+shift+I and in the left side of the window the required files will be shown as they're being modified.

Don’t listen to the naysayers: this can be Dropbox all over again! I love Cursor but, it’s a pity it’s not OSS.

The success of Void is tied to how well you implement the part in which AI reasons about multiple files. This is where all the sauce is in Cursor at the moment imo.

> Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source so we (and Cursor) have to hack our way through it.

For the marketplace, can you not use Open VSX [1]?

[1] https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx

I want to build my own agents so I can my private domain specific awareness in the coding environment: PRDs, product docs, API docs, business goals, etc. I'm assuming I could point this to any API compatible endpoint and build my own agents?

Tried the get in touch link, but the Google form says I need permission to view it.

Why is this a Show HN not a launch HN? Is it simply a concept and not yet fleshed out?

Hard sell to choose you especially as a full on editor replacement (as well as a copilot replacement) without a demo or even gifs.

You mention refactoring. Do you hope to be able to merge new VScode improvements as they arise, or is this a hard fork that will diverge from VSCode from now on?

My primary usage of cursor is cmd+L and cmd+K, I'll give it a shot. Also, makes sense to make an open source alternative. How do you plan on monetizing?

It’s just been so long since going from ‘head to code’ has been the hard part for me. I’d imagine you have to be very unfamiliar for this to be useful.

Cursor needs some competition. Their generation quality fell off a cliff recently as they are doing behind the scenes product optimizations with LLMs

Is this really "open source"? Can I download all source code and run it locally without internet connection?

Ughh. I'm tired of these open source vc backed companies. Can't wait for this meta to die out.

Genuine question: why don’t you started from VSCodium if the the VSCode is too much hassle to deal with?

The repository contains the full source code but there's a waitlist to download? Why?

Great job! Can you share where the codebase prompts are listed? Maybe it is a valuable thing to learn

Why the completely generic name, with meaning unrelated in any way to editors?

That's intriguing. I'd like to be a user.

does it support, ssh workspaces like vs code?

does it support, ssh workspaces like vs code

> we're building Void as a fork of vscode

Hard pass.

Sorry but you can pry IDEA from my cold dead hands or at least VSCode doesn't hold a candle to it IMHO. And no, I'm not looking for a discussion on VSCode vs IDEA.

Building a new code editor for a single feature is a dead end in my opinion.

Honestly, I'd rather have a buggish extension than having to change editor.

most exciting is that it will run locally and we don't have to use middleman and give up our juicy data. lol

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This investment by YC in both Void and Continue.dev perfectly exemplifies the VC spray-and-pray approach by backing two nearly identical open-source VSCode plugins for AI-assisted coding.

They're simply throwing money at similar projects in the same space, hoping one will stick, without any special insight or reason why one should be more successful over another.

release date?

Why are so many coding assistant forks? Is it fashion or is there a technical reason? Imagine Python support being a fork. Or live server.