Tooling

A reference for the build, lint, and release tooling used by the project.

Build

Command	What it does
cargo run	Debug build of the zed binary
cargo run --release	Release build
cargo run --profile release-fast	Faster compile, near-release perf
cargo build -p <crate>	Build a single crate
cargo check	Type-check without producing binaries
script/bootstrap	Install OS-level build deps (POSIX)
script/bootstrap.ps1	Install OS-level build deps (Windows)

Lint

The wrapper ./script/clippy is the single source of truth. From .rules:

Use ./script/clippy instead of cargo clippy.

It applies workspace-wide flags and feature toggles that raw cargo clippy would miss.

Tests

Command	What it does
cargo test	All tests
cargo test -p <crate>	One crate
cargo nextest run	Same, via nextest if installed
cargo bench -p editor	Editor benchmarks
cargo run --features visual-tests	Run with visual test runner enabled
script/compare-perf	Performance regression comparison

CI workflow: .github/workflows/run_tests.yml.

Licenses

Tool	What it does
cargo-about	License vetting library
script/check-licenses	Run cargo-about with project rules
script/licenses/zed-licenses.toml	Allowed-license list + clarifications
script/generate-licenses	Build the bundled third-party-licenses page

If CI complains about licenses, the README.md has step-by-step recovery.

Releases

Script / workflow	Purpose
script/cherry-pick	Cherry-pick onto a release branch
script/draft-release-notes	Draft notes from PRs since a tag
script/get-release-notes-since	Lower-level: list PRs since a tag
script/get-pull-requests-since	Even lower: just PR titles + numbers
script/bump-zed-version	Bump main version
script/bump-nightly	Bump nightly
script/bump-extension-cli	Bump the bundled extension CLI version
script/bump-gpui-version	Bump the gpui crate version
script/create-draft-release	Create a draft GitHub release
script/determine-release-channel	Infer channel from branch
script/bundle-mac	Build the macOS bundle
script/bundle-linux	Build the Linux bundle
script/bundle-windows.ps1	Build the Windows bundle
script/bundle-freebsd	Build the FreeBSD bundle
script/flatpak	Flatpak packaging

Workflows that drive releases:

• .github/workflows/bump_patch_version.yml
• .github/workflows/bump_zed_version.yml
• .github/workflows/cherry_pick.yml
• .github/workflows/after_release.yml
• .github/workflows/extension_auto_bump.yml
• .github/workflows/extension_bump.yml

Crash & telemetry tooling

Item	Purpose
crates/crashes	In-process crash handler → Sentry
script/sentry-fetch <issue-id>	Pull a crash report
script/crash-to-prompt <issue-id>	Generate an AI investigation prompt
.factory/prompts/crash/investigate.md	Investigation prompt template
.factory/prompts/crash/fix.md	Fix prompt template
crates/telemetry, crates/telemetry_events	Event pipeline

Other developer aids

Tool / script	Purpose
script/check-keymaps	Validate bundled keymaps
script/check-todos	Sweep TODO/FIXME annotations
script/check-links	Validate links in docs (lychee)
lychee.toml	Lychee config
script/crate-dep-graph	Visualise the workspace dependency graph
script/danger	Run Danger PR checks
dangerfile.ts / package.json	Danger and Prettier configuration
clippy.toml	Custom clippy lint configuration
.git-blame-ignore-revs	Mass-format commits to ignore in blame
.mailmap	Author normalization for git log
tooling/	Misc dev tooling
script/docs-suggest	LLM-based documentation suggestions
script/docs-strip-preview-callouts	Strip preview-only callouts from docs

Editor metadata

• .zed/ — bundled per-repo Zed settings (used when you open the Zed repo in Zed).
• .factory/ — Factory.ai integration: prompts (.factory/prompts/) and skills (.factory/skills/). The humanizer and brand-writer skills are project-local writing aids.

CI infrastructure

.github/workflows/ carries 30+ workflows. The biggest ones to know:

• run_tests.yml — main CI.
• assign-reviewers.yml — auto-assign reviewers from REVIEWERS.conl.
• pr_labeler.yml, community_* — community automation.
• deploy_collab.yml, bump_collab_staging.yml — collab backend deployment.
• deploy_cloudflare.yml — Cloudflare deploys (likely the docs site).
• compliance_check.yml — license/CLA enforcement.
• release_actions.yml — release-time orchestration.
• compare_perf.yml — performance regression checks.
• cherry_pick.yml, hotfix-review-monitor.yml — release-branch hygiene.