Software Is Made Between Commits

The Zed team developed DeltaDB, focusing on the limitation that existing Git's commit-centric snapshot approach struggles to connect ongoing conversations with agents to code changes.

Rather than using commit units, DeltaDB records every operation as a fine-grained Delta stream, assigning a unique identifier to each delta. This allows messages and the edits they produced to be recorded side by side, so that even while code is changing, one can precisely reference the conversation and state at a specific point in time.

Key features are as follows.

• Fusion of conversation and code: The conversational context that produced the code is stored together with the code rather than being separated from it, allowing agents to grasp the background of past work on their own.
• Real-time collaboration: Through conflict-free replicated worktrees, multiple people and agents can simultaneously edit the same files from different machines.
• Escaping asynchronous review: Without needing to wait for commits and pushes, team members and agents can discuss and annotate instantly within an in-progress worktree.

DeltaDB aims for an environment where software evolves not as a mere collection of code but as 'the product of conversation', and is set to be made available to early users soon.