Zed Extensions

Zed extensions are Git repositories containing an extension.toml manifest. They can provide languages, themes, debuggers, snippets, and MCP servers.

Extensions can provide:

• Languages
• Debuggers
• Themes
• Icon Themes
• Snippets
• MCP Servers

Before starting to develop an extension for Zed, be sure to install Rust via rustup.

Rust must be installed via rustup. If you have Rust installed via homebrew or otherwise, installing dev extensions will not work.

When developing an extension, you can use it in Zed without needing to publish it by installing it as a dev extension.

From the extensions page, click the Install Dev Extension button (or the zed: install dev extension action) and select the directory containing your extension.

If you need to troubleshoot, check Zed.log (zed: open log) for additional output. For debug output, close and relaunch Zed from the command line with zed --foreground, which shows more verbose INFO-level logs.

If you already have the published version of the extension installed, the published version will be uninstalled prior to the installation of the dev extension. After successful installation, the Extensions page will indicate that the upstream extension is "Overridden by dev extension".

A Zed extension is a Git repository that contains an extension.toml. This file must contain some basic information about the extension:

id = "my-extension"
name = "My extension"
version = "0.0.1"
schema_version = 1
authors = ["Your Name <you@example.com>"]
description = "Example extension"
repository = "https://github.com/your-name/my-zed-extension"

In addition to this, there are several other optional files and directories that can be used to add functionality to a Zed extension. An example directory structure of an extension that provides all capabilities is as follows:

my-extension/
  extension.toml
  Cargo.toml
  src/
    lib.rs
  languages/
    my-language/
      config.toml
      highlights.scm
  themes/
    my-theme.json
  snippets/
    snippets.json
    rust.json

Procedural parts of extensions are written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. To develop an extension that includes custom code, include a Cargo.toml like this:

[package]
name = "my-extension"
version = "0.0.1"
edition = "2021"

[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib"]

[dependencies]
zed_extension_api = "0.1.0"

Use the latest version of the zed_extension_api available on crates.io. Make sure it's still compatible with Zed versions you want to support.

In the src/lib.rs file in your Rust crate you will need to define a struct for your extension and implement the Extension trait, as well as use the register_extension! macro to register your extension:

use zed_extension_api as zed;

struct MyExtension {
    // ... state
}

impl zed::Extension for MyExtension {
    // ...
}

zed::register_extension!(MyExtension);

stdout/stderr is forwarded directly to the Zed process. In order to see println!/dbg! output from your extension, you can start Zed in your terminal with a --foreground flag.

Steps to Publish or Update Extensions

1. Fork the repo

Note: It is very helpful if you fork the zed-industries/extensions repo to a personal GitHub account instead of a GitHub organization, as this allows Zed staff to push any needed changes to your PR to expedite the publishing process.

2. Clone the repo to your local machine

# Substitute the url of your fork here:
   # git clone https://github.com/zed-industries/extensions
   cd extensions
   git submodule init
   git submodule update

As of October 1st, 2025, extension repositories must include a license. The following licenses are accepted:

• Apache 2.0
• BSD 2-Clause
• BSD 3-Clause
• CC BY 4.0
• GNU GPLv3
• GNU LGPLv3
• MIT
• Unlicense
• zlib

This allows us to distribute the resulting binary produced from your extension code to our users. Without a valid license, the pull request to add or update your extension in the following steps will fail CI.

Your license file should be at the root of your extension repository. Any filename that has LICENCE or LICENSE as a prefix (case insensitive) will be inspected to ensure it matches one of the accepted licenses. See the license validation source code.

This license requirement applies only to your extension code itself (the code that gets compiled into the extension binary). It does not apply to any tools your extension may download or interact with, such as language servers or other external dependencies.

Before publishing your extension, make sure that you have chosen a unique extension ID for your extension in the extension manifest. This will be the primary identifier for your extension and cannot be changed after your extension has been published. Also, ensure that you have filled out all the required fields in the manifest.

Furthermore, please make sure that your extension fulfills the following preconditions before you move on to publishing your extension:

• Extension IDs and names must not contain the words zed, Zed or extension, since they are all Zed extensions.
• Your extension ID should provide some information on what your extension tries to accomplish. E.g. for themes, it should be suffixed with -theme, snippet extensions should be suffixed with -snippets and so on.
• Extensions should provide something that is not yet available in the marketplace as opposed to fixing something that could be resolved within an existing extension.
• Extensions that intend to provide a language, debugger or MCP server must not ship the language server as part of the extension.
• Themes and icon themes should not be published as part of extensions that provide other features, e.g. language support.

Note that non-compliance will be raised during the publishing process by reviewers and delay the release of your extension.

Prior to publishing your extension, you should have installed as well as tested it locally thoroughly. Note that untested extension submissions where the extension is not functioning at all will be closed eagerly without further feedback.

To publish an extension, open a PR to the zed-industries/extensions repo.

1. Add your extension as a Git submodule within the extensions/ directory under the extensions/{extension-id} path

git submodule add https://github.com/your-username/foobar-zed.git extensions/my-extension
   git add extensions/my-extension

2. Add a new entry to the top-level extensions.toml file containing your extension:

[my-extension]
   submodule = "extensions/my-extension"
   version = "0.0.1"

3. Run pnpm sort-extensions to ensure extensions.toml and .gitmodules are sorted.

Once your PR is merged, the extension will be packaged and published to the Zed extension registry. To update an extension, follow a similar process, updating the extension's submodule and version in extensions.toml.