Emerging Dynamism of Void Editor: Will it Compete with Cursor and Copilot?

In the ever-evolving world of coding, a new contender has emerged to challenge the dominance of proprietary tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Meet Void, an open-source AI-powered code editor that aims to be the go-to alternative for developers.

Backed by Y Combinator, Void is designed with a developer-first approach, offering a familiar and lightweight coding experience built on the Visual Studio Code foundation. The editor supports themes, extensions, and standard key bindings, as well as core features like the built-in terminal, Git integration, and language server support.

One of the standout features of Void is its integration with AI models. Users can run AI models locally via LM Studio, Ollama, and proprietary providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The process of setting up a model in Void, using LM Studio's local server option, was surprisingly smooth due to Void automatically detecting installed models.

Void was tested on Fedora 41 and connected to a local LM Studio server running Google's Gemma 3 12B model. The integration was seamless, with Void handling prompts like "Summarize my codebase" and "Is the code good?" with ease. Void offers fast, native editing even in huge files and understands the whole codebase without requiring any configuration.

Users have full control over prompts and data, and can choose which AI models to connect to. This control ensures that developers maintain ownership over their work and data.

While using the Nouveau GPU driver resulted in a slow output in the AI features, performance is expected to improve with the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

Binaries for Linux can be found in Void's GitHub repository, with additional packages for Windows and macOS available on the official website. Users can try Void to decide if it can be on their list of vibe coding tools on Linux. Switching from VS Code to Void is relatively easy as most extensions, themes, and settings should still work.

It's important to note that Void is still in active development, so using it comes with the usual risks of pre-release software. The first beta of Void was released in January and has seen regular updates since.

The demo codebase used was Dosage's, which is mostly JavaScript and features a clean, well-organized structure. However, the person involved in the development of Void, the open-source code editor, working alongside Andrew Pareles, is not identifiable from the provided search results.

In conclusion, Void offers a promising alternative for developers seeking an open-source, AI-powered code editor. With its smooth integration, control over prompts and data, and familiar coding experience, Void is worth considering for your coding toolkit.