The IDE market is splitting in two directions. Understanding where Idep sits—and why—matters if you’re evaluating tools for serious development work.
Comparison
| Windsurf / Cursor | Zed | Google Antigravity | Idep | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime | Electron (VS Code fork) | Native (GPUI) | Electron (VS Code fork) | Native (Rust) |
| License | Proprietary | GPL-3 / AGPL-3 | Proprietary | Apache 2.0 |
| AI paradigm | Inline assist | Inline assist | Agent orchestration | Precise completion + RAG |
| AI backends | BYOK (cloud-locked models) | Multi-provider | Gemini-first + Claude/GPT | Any — no middleman |
| Codebase RAG | Local index, cloud inference | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ fully in-process |
| Cloud dependency | Moderate | Low | Hard (Google account) | None |
| RAM floor | 4–8GB | ~4GB | 16GB recommended | ~2GB target |
| WSL2 / Linux | Good | Good | Okay | First-class |
| Self-hostable | Enterprise only | Partial | ❌ | ✅ fully |
| Open source | ❌ | GPL-3 / AGPL-3 | ❌ | Apache 2.0 |
Positioning
The IDE market is splitting in two directions:
Upward — tools like Google Antigravity are becoming agent orchestration platforms. You delegate features to autonomous agents. The IDE becomes Mission Control. Powerful for high-level product work. Requires cloud. Requires trust. Requires Google.
Downward — Idep goes the other way. Native runtime, local inference, in-process RAG. You remain the thinker. The tool disappears. Your codebase never leaves your machine.
Idep is for developers who want thought-level control, not agent-level delegation. Your codebase index runs in-process — not just locally, but never touching a network path even for embedding. That’s a sharper claim than any other tool in this table.
Architecture
idep/
├── idep-core — editor engine (buffer, workspace, LSP orchestration)
├── idep-ai — AI layer (completions, chat, codebase indexer)
│ ├── backends/ — Anthropic · HuggingFace · Ollama · OpenAI-compat
│ ├── completion/ — FIM-aware inline completions
│ ├── chat/ — multi-turn conversation, context-aware
│ └── indexer/ — codebase RAG (tree-sitter + embeddings)
├── idep-lsp — LSP client
├── idep-plugin — WASM plugin SDK
└── idep-index — vector index (fastembed-rs + usearch)
Getting Started
# Clone
git clone https://github.com/idep-editor/idep
cd idep
# Build
cargo build
# Configure — copy and edit
mkdir -p ~/.config/idep
cp config.example.toml ~/.config/idep/config.toml
Ready to try it? Head to the GitHub repository to get started.