Zed Blog: Why Real-Time Collaboration Outpaces Pull Request Culture
By
Nathan Sobo
Baker's choice. Dense with flavour, light on filler.
Summary
The Zed team explains their philosophy that software is truly made in the conversations between commits, not in pull request reviews. They argue that traditional PR-based collaboration is outdated, especially with AI agents, and that real-time collaborative editing in the same worktree builds better trust and shared understanding. The article introduces DeltaDB, a version control system designed for conversation-driven development rather than commit-based workflows.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI have never been a big fan of pull requests.
Before agents, it was easier to believe that the ceremony of trading comments on snapshots was an effective way to collaborate on software, but it never really worked for the Zed team.
GitHub doesn't let you talk about code until after you commit and push, but by then our most important conversations are usually already over.
Agents turned the conversation into the real source of our software. DeltaDB is the version control built for it.
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