This matrix compares the twelve surfaces profiled in this section, feature by feature, from editors to agent platforms to session cockpits. Everything below was verified against live sources on 2026-08-24 and re-verified on 2026-09-13.
The surfaces differ less in whether they have an agent and more in what they are: an editor with an agent inside, a platform that treats the editor as one client, or a cockpit for many agents, and the row that matters most is the one nobody advertises, who runs where.
Legend: ✓ supported, ✗ not supported, ~ partial or conditional, ? not verified as of the date above. Each column links to the full research note; every cell traces to a source cited there or in the references.
The matrix #
| Feature | Antigravity | Continue | Cursor | JetBrains | Kiro | OpenChamber | Roo Code | Trae | Void | VS Code + Copilot | Windsurf | Zed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kind | platform, IDE, CLI, SDK | extensions and CLI | VS Code fork | IDE suite | closed IDE | local session app | VS Code extension | VS Code fork | VS Code fork | editor plus extensions | VS Code fork | Rust editor |
| Open source | ✗ | ✓ Apache-2.0 | ✗ | ~ Community IDEs | ✗ | ✓ MIT | ✓ Apache-2.0 | ✗ | ✓ Apache-2.0 | ~ MIT editor | ✗ | ~ mixed licenses |
| Free tier | ✓ unlimited completions | ✓ final 2.1.0 | ✓ Hobby | ✓ 5 credits | ✓ 50 credits | ✓ | ✓ BYOK extension | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ Copilot Free | ✓ Devin account | ✓ |
| BYOK | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ Junie | ✗ | ✓ via OpenCode | ✓ | ? | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ Devin key only | ✓ |
| Local models | ✗ | ✓ Ollama | ? | ✓ Junie | ✗ | ✓ via OpenCode | ✓ | ? | ? | ✓ | ? | ✓ |
| MCP | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AGENTS.md | ? | ✗ own rules | ✓ | ✗ guidelines.md | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ if enabled | ✓ | ? | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cloud agents | ~ remote control | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ web and Crew | ✗ local machine only | ~ Cloud sunset 2026-05 | ✓ TraeWork | ✗ | ✓ Copilot agent | ✓ Devin | ✗ |
| Parallel agent management | ✓ command center | ✗ | ✓ fleets | ? | ✓ Crew | ✓ core loop | ~ orchestrator mode | ✓ concurrent tasks | ✗ | ✓ Agents window | ✓ Command Center | ~ agent panel |
| Scheduled work | ✓ scheduled messages | ✗ | ✓ automations | ? | ✓ hooks | ✓ cron | ? | ? | ✗ | ~ via GitHub | ? | ✗ |
| Mobile surface | ✓ remote control | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ beta | ? | ? | ✗ | ✓ Copilot app | ? | ✗ |
Reading the matrix #
I weight the cloud-agents and BYOK rows heaviest, because they decide where your work actually executes. The free-tier row is the story of 2026: every surface now has one, and the differences are rate limits and credit counts rather than feature walls. Antigravity and OpenChamber are the extremes, a closed platform giving the most capability away and an open app with no paid tier to gate anything.
MCP support is table stakes and effectively universal, which moves the differentiation to AGENTS.md, where JetBrains (guidelines.md) is now the lone vendor-convention holdout after Kiro added AGENTS.md support.
The cloud-agents row separates three philosophies: platforms with their own cloud (Cursor, Kiro, Trae, Windsurf under Devin, VS Code via GitHub), tools that only reach your own machine (OpenChamber, Zed, Void), and Antigravity’s remote-control middle path.
BYOK plus local models is the sovereignty column pair, and only JetBrains (via Junie), OpenChamber (via OpenCode), VS Code, and Zed fill both cells today.
Two of the twelve columns are death records, Continue acquired by Cursor in June 2026 and Roo Code sunset by its own team in May 2026, so their cells read as as-they-were snapshots; both exits point at Cline, which tells you where the extension generation’s value consolidated.
Choosing from the matrix #
- Want the editor to stay dumb and own the agents: OpenChamber, Zed, or VS Code with an ACP harness.
- Want the surface to also be the cloud: Cursor, Kiro, or Windsurf under Devin.
- Want zero budget: Antigravity’s free tier or Void, accepting the incident record or the stall respectively.
- Must keep code on-device: OpenChamber, Void, or Zed with BYOK.
Changes #
- 2026-08-24 - Created in the owner-requested matrix run, ten surfaces by eleven feature rows.
- 2026-08-26 - Added a first-person reading line per the writing rules.
- 2026-08-26 - Extended from ten to twelve columns with Continue and Roo Code, adding the death-records paragraph.
- 2026-09-04 - Updated the Continue cell after its final release was corrected to 2.1.0-vscode.
- 2026-09-13 - Replaced the dead docs.windsurf.com reference (now 404) with docs.devin.ai, which now serves the Devin Desktop docs alone.
See also #
- Harness Feature Matrix - the same treatment for terminal agents
- Agentic Coding Tools Landscape - the map these columns come from
- ACP - the protocol that keeps the editor choice replaceable
- AGENTS.md - the convention behind the AGENTS.md row
- Six Months with OpenChamber - a longitudinal account of one column
References #
https://antigravity.google/pricing - free tier scope for the Antigravity column
https://cursor.com/docs/rules - AGENTS.md support for the Cursor column (formerly /docs/context/rules, moved)
https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/agent-customization/custom-instructions - AGENTS.md support for the VS Code column
https://zed.dev/docs/ai/agents - agent and AGENTS.md support for the Zed column
https://docs.trae.ai/ide/agent-rules - AGENTS.md support for the Trae column (currently redirects through a Trae promo page mid-site-restructure)
https://docs.continue.dev/customize/rules - rules system for the Continue column
https://roocodeinc.github.io/Roo-Code/features/custom-instructions - AGENTS.md and .roorules for the Roo Code column
https://docs.devin.ai/desktop/getting-started - product direction and MCP for the Windsurf column, now serving the Devin Desktop docs directly since docs.windsurf.com began returning 404