Concurrent Agent Chat Windows (tabbed agent threads)

[xipeng-jin]

TL;DR: I added a tab bar to the Agent panel so you can run multiple agent threads in parallel (Zed native or external agents) and jump between them without losing context or scroll position. Great for long-running tasks, multi-prompt workflows, and deep backscroll review.

I would like to share some experience with it. This will really help me kick off a long-running task with one agent, then ask a different agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, etc.) something unrelated in another tab—no blocking, no context loss. And when you hop away from a lengthy conversation to another thread and return, you land exactly where you left off instead of snapping to the bottom. The UX will be familiar with you since the Agent panel’s tab bar behaves like Zed’s main editor tabs, so it feels native from day one.

Here is a quick demo recording for my current implementation

official.agent.panel.tabs.management.mov

What’s in the branch

1. Automatically open a new tab whenever you start a new thread (with Zed native agent, external agents like CC, Codex ..) or load a historical chat from history.
2. The tab bar will work as the same way as the normal tab bar in the main editor. It means you are having a cleaner chrome: Tab-bar controls auto-hide unless the Agent panel is focused, reclaiming horizontal space.
3. Tabs track threads via session_id, so each tab remains bound to its underlying conversation (including historical resume).
4. The tab title will be automatically shorten by maximum 20 characters to save more spaces when you have a long title for the inactive tabs (tool-tip shows full text). For the current active tab, it is still showing the full title.
5. The History and Settings view will work exactly as previous.
6. You can edit the tab title by clicking the "Edit Title" in the options drop down menu "...", and the agent panel will show the original title editor on the top. Then you can modify the title, confirm, cancel/go back as you want, plus a new keybinding (EditTitle) added to the default keymaps (Linux/Windows/Mac).

Example flows this PR will unlock

• Start a refactor with one agent; while it runs, open another tab to draft tests or ask for alternative designs.
• Deep-scroll a long conversation to cross-check a specific answer; jump out to another thread for a quick follow-up; jump back and you’re still on the same message—no re-scrolling.

I would like to hear any feedback on this new design. Is this something people will find helpful or is there anything we can improve on top of it? I am also excited to further discuss this design with Zed team to confirm this is what we are planning to do on the Roadmap.

Thanks for taking a look!

[8tomat8]

I keep running cursor on the background only to have Codex there researching a feature, while Zed can be occupied with Claude Code task.
Tabs would solve this issue 100%

[eikooc]

This is really nice. Some other prior art that could be considered for the agent panel is the UI/UX that is also used in "Agent Manager" in the Antigravity editor https://antigravity.google/docs/agent-manager

[drdanielbender]

Just searched for this feature in the Zed settings. Sadly it is not there, but so cool that it is already implemented and a PR created.

[almmaasoglu]

Any news on this? Definitely a much needed feature, I'm currently running a custom solution that basically does the same thing. An official update would be good.

[ozturkkl]

Just installed Zed coming from Cursor. The tabs are needed for sure. It's also uclear to me how to start a new thread with the current provider. When I click the "+" the Anthropic API route is not there so I have to go to "settings -> click on provider -> start new thread"

Am I doing something wrong?

[winzamark123]

+1 on this! Coming from Cursor as well, love the UI and how minimal the IDE is. But having only 1 thread at a time really slows down development. Currently have to use CC on another terminal while Zed runs.

[mwesox]

Would welcome such a feature. Its very limiting to run only one agent task at a time.

[gravyplaya]

This would be a game changing feature for sure. Can we get this released ASAP please?

[pistoganza]

I'm currently working in the console versions of Codex and Claude Code, handling 6 or more tasks in parallel. How can I switch to Zed after this? The feature for multiple agents is definitely needed.

[code23-software]

100% needed! I love zed but the ability to use just one agent like is slowing me down hugely.

[timvdhoorn]

I really need this..! this is keeping me from switching from vscode

[Egonso]

yes - we need this!

[MRiabov]

I mean, guys, you can simply use the terminal tabs. Either way, the UI is simply a wrapper around a CLI tool.

…

On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 11:43 AM Kelvin Portuphy ***@***.***> wrote: We all need this ASAP... — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#42381 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AZZOTD5OM4FHS25ADJXVN734OAUVJAVCNFSM6AAAAACLWIHDZ2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKOJUGYYTANQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mac9sb]

You lose out on things like the diff views and the nice UI around the CLI there though. I understand your sentiment and the terminal tabs work for now but it is not the same experience.

[MRiabov]

I personally stopped using any editors at all and am in TUIs only now. I wish Zed had better UI, but it's washed out colors strain my eyes on literally any theme I tried, so anyway, TUIs ftw. git status if necessary.

[mac9sb]

That's great however I think if you are only using TUI's then your opinion on what goes in a GUI editor is mildly irrelevant compared to those who choose to use one.

I recommend NIghtFox (I use the blurred version) with SF Mono at around 11 buffer and 12.5 UI font size. I find the text is incredibly crisp and the UI is beautiful.

[manubhai04]

Hey @mac9sb sorry for a question irrelevant to this issue, but how did you configure this blur setting? looks amazing

[mac9sb]

@thunderbolt004 I believe at the time of that screenshot I was using Nightfox Blurred but if you search blur in the theme category of extensions there's a lot of themes like this and you can take a look at the theme json files on their respective repos if you want to make your own blurred theme

[SarthakMishra]

Cursor has this and I use it a lot. Not sure why this is still not implemented - there is definitely a lot of interest.

Also, this (sort of) fixes:

• [CRITICAL] Agent Panel: starting a new thread leaves currently streaming thread in limbo, with data loss #50434
• Agent Panel: New Agent panel breaks multi-tab support and loses context #30172
• AI: current chat will stop if I switch to another chat #40790

I created my own version with claude: https://github.com/SarthakMishra/zed/tree/feature/agent-panel-tabs

agent-pannel-tabs.mp4

• adds a tab bar to the agent panel (matching the file editor tab bar)
• each thread (native agent, ACP/external agents, text threads) gets its own tab
• tabs persist across restarts (serialization/deserialization)
• focus-based toolbar visibility, auto-scroll to active tab, hover-to-close
• configurable new_thread_opens_tab setting for ctrl+n behavior

I have no experience in Rust, so if someone who knows what they are doing want to take it from here then please go ahead.

[simonfelding]

Visually it looks nice! I like it.

[uwzis]

Needs to be merged to main plz @nathansobo

Trying to build a billion dollar company here :)

[Faraclas]

This is a needed feature. It looks like several have already implemented it on their own, lets get it in!

[23f2005217]

Please someone share any workarounds or tricks for this issue.

[slowernet]

For now, the workaround is to use claude CLI in multiple terminal sessions.

[jamesheavey]

Do you know if theres a way to have terminal sessions in panels?

[23f2005217]

Having terminal session is not a solution I think the idea of separate ai assistant/agent in zed editor is because it can review and you will be able to accept or reject the changes also you will be able to highlight a piece of code and send to ai chat. Which you cannot do with terminal sessions.

[Nyrok]

Tabbed agent threads solve the UI problem. The thing I notice is that parallel threads raise the cost of unclear prompts: with one thread you can clarify mid-run, but with four running at once you want each one to start from a solid spec.

The pattern that helps me: decomposing each starting prompt into typed blocks (role, objective, constraints, output format) before spawning a thread. Structured input means fewer interruptions across concurrent runs.

I built flompt around this idea, a visual prompt builder that decomposes prompts into 12 semantic blocks and compiles to Claude-optimized XML. Open-source: github.com/Nyrok/flompt

The tab-per-thread model in Zed could pair naturally with a typed prompt per tab, so each thread starts from a clear spec rather than a freeform question.

[cod3licious]

The new Jetbrain's Air IDE looks really nice to work with multiple agents in parallel: https://air.dev/
Maybe this could also serve as inspiration for this feature?

A change here is really desperately needed. Being able to reference old sessions is a helpful start but still really buggy (you sometimes see sessions from other projects that will give you an error when clicking on them and at least for Claude Agent the sessions are often poorly named with no option to change the name, which makes it hard to find old threads). But coding with AI is really at the point where not being able to work with multiple agents in parallel is a dealbreaker... sad to say this as I really love Zed so much as an editor.

[franciskafyi]

As mentioned in here this is something we're actively working on.

[pridiuksson]

love it! thank you

[rodrigorodriguescosta]

this would be helpful, I was looking for that, Zed is going to replace jetbrains, vscode and cursor once implement features like that where help multi agent tasks, tabs or/and sidebar would give much producivity

[JosephTLyons]

Hey all, parallel agents have now shipped in v0.233.5. 🎉
You can read more about it in our blog post.

While this specific request was for a tab-based UI, we landed on a new sidebar design instead and we don't plan to pursue a tab-based implementation at this time. That said, the underlying capability you're after is here: you can run multiple agent threads in parallel.

If you hit any bugs, please open an issue.

[simonfelding]

Looks fantastic, thanks!!! Way better than tabbed - pretty sure it was a suggestion from thinking inside the box.

…

On Wed, Apr 22, 2026 at 10:29 PM Joseph T. Lyons ***@***.***> wrote: Hey all, parallel agents have now shipped in v0.233.5 <https://zed.dev/releases/stable/0.233.5>. 🎉 You can read more about it in our blog post <https://zed.dev/blog/parallel-agents>. While this specific request was for a tab-based UI, we landed on a new sidebar design instead and we don't plan to pursue a tab-based implementation at this time. That said, the underlying capability you're after is here: you can run multiple agent threads in parallel. If you hit any bugs, please open an issue <https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/new?template=10_bug_report.yml> . — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#42381?email_source=notifications&email_token=AKYOW73D2FDMUGB5Q5XBA4D4XETRZA5CNFSNUABIM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2ENFZWG5LTONUW63SDN5WW2ZLOOQXTCNRWG42TCNJZUZZGKYLTN5XKOY3PNVWWK3TUUVSXMZLOOSWGM33PORSXEX3DNRUWG2Y#discussioncomment-16675159>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AKYOW74XHZBRK4F4RSKXDB34XETRZAVCNFSM6AAAAACLWIHDZ2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTMNRXGUYTKOI> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[dominictobias]

I don't understand how to use it. When I do new Zed Agent my chat just gets wiped. There is no tabbing. What am I missing here?