Void: Open-source Cursor alternative
45 comments
·May 8, 2025olalonde
It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. Curious how this compares to others like Cline, VS Code Copilot's Agent mode, Roo Code, Kilo Code, etc. Any standout features?
kristopolous
Void has been around since last year.
I'm working on an agnostic unified framework to make contexts transferrable between the tools.
This will permit zero friction, zero interruption, transitions between these solutions.
Should have something to show by next week.
jadbox
My 2c: I rarely need agent mode. As an older engineer, I usually know what exactly needs to be done and have no problem describing to the LLM what to do to solve what I'm aiming to do. Agent mode seems its more for novice developers who are unsure what tasks need to be broken down and the strategy that they are then solved.
behnamoh
The difference is this one is backed by Y Combinator.
johnfn
This is very cool and I'm always happy to see more competition in this space. That said, two suggestions:
- The logo looks like it was inspired directly from the Cursor logo and modified slightly. I would suggest changing it.
- It might be wise to brand yourself as your own thing, not just an "open source Cursor". I tend to have the expectation that "open source [X]" projects are worse than "[X]". Probably unfair, I know.
nm980
Is there some benefit from forking vscode instead of creating an extension?
johnfn
As an (ex) VSCode extension developer, VSCode really does lock down what you can do as an extension. It's well intentioned and likely led to the success of VSCode, but it's not great if you want to build entirely new UI interactions. For instance, something like the cmd-k inline generation UI in Cursor is basically impossible as a VSCode extension.
gman83
People keep saying that the extensions API is too limited or something, but Cline seems to manage fine with being an extension.
kristopolous
They've been changing that recently
MortyWaves
It gets them more slop funding if they can say they have an “AI IDE”.
dang
Related:
Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41563958 - Sept 2024 (154 comments)
freeamz
Why no linux build? It is just vscode in ts right? And it is an electron app right?
ciwchris
There's a link for Linux at the bottom of the download page, which directs to the releases in GitHub
dcminter
Presumably you could raise a PR...?
elric
Any particular reason why they forked VSCode and not Theia?
kookamamie
Nobody uses Theia, relatively speaking.
tough
Oh wow this is nice, will try it out.
Ycombinator backed too I guess Vibe coding is here to stay
Demiurge
I don't know anything about the project, I use Zed editor, but I think the logo is really cool.
xwowsersx
Can you use OpenRouter with this?
tough
Yes at onboarding asks for gemini and openrouter keys
behnamoh
and pay 5% commission? no thanks.
amackera
I've got a great setup going with Emacs and Aidermacs[1]. I just can't stand using VS Code, it's impossible to configure to my liking.
koakuma-chan
My setup: vim -> ctrl + z -> claude -> ctrl + c -> fg
brcmthrowaway
good luck copy and pasting with vim with tmux in the mix
koakuma-chan
:w !clip.exe
mm263
Skill issue on your part
calvinmorrison
it's a shame vim is so stinky because after 15 years of using it now i find myself using vscode. I always like vim because editing is efficient. Now I dont write as much as supervise a lot of the boilerplate code.
Over the years I have gotten better with vim, added phpactor and other tooling, but frankly i dont have time to futz and its not so polished. With VSCode I can just work. I don't love everything about it, but it works well enough with copilot i forgot the benefits of vim.
kurtis_reed
what sorts of things are hard to configure?
null
sampton
VSCode death by a thousand forks.
https://voideditor.com/download-beta