ZCode

ZCode is Z.ai's (Zhipu AI) agentic development environment, released July 2026 and positioned as the official harness for its GLM model line. Unlike a VS Code fork, it has no traditional code editor: you give the agent a task and it plans, edits files, runs commands, uses the browser, and verifies results, with the task — not the file — as the central object. It ships as an Electron desktop app, a browser UI for remote collaboration, and a terminal agent, with a Goal system for long-horizon tasks and remote triggering from WeChat, Feishu, and Telegram. ZCode surpassed one million users in August 2026. In September 2026, after a researcher found it uploading local project data including Git histories without consent, Z.ai apologized and open-sourced the client, backend, and agent CLI under Apache 2.0.

The honest picture: the open-sourcing was a remediation response to a genuine privacy incident, and open code can't verify what happened to data already collected server-side. The strongest capabilities are tied to Z.ai's own GLM models via paid Coding Plans (Lite ~$13/mo to Max ~$118/mo). Teams with strict data-residency requirements should scrutinize telemetry practices before rollout.

Download prebuilt binaries for macOS, Windows, or Linux from zcode.z.ai, or clone github.com/zai-org/ZCode and build with Node 24 and pnpm. Sign up for a GLM Coding Plan or connect your own API keys.