ZCode is Z.ai's Apache-2.0 agentic dev environment, an Electron app with the agent chat, file manager, terminal, git and live preview, built for GLM models.
Yes, ZCode is open source under the Apache-2.0 license.
ZCode is free to use.
Yes, ZCode can be self-hosted (the source is available under the Apache-2.0 license).
Apache-2.0 agentic development environment from Z.ai (Zhipu), a TypeScript Electron app that puts the agent conversation at the center and arranges everything it touches around it: a file manager, a terminal, a Git panel and a live browser preview, with desktop, browser and terminal interfaces and an Agent CLI runtime. Z.ai open-sourced the full stack, the client, backend, shared UI and Agent CLI, as a pnpm monorepo. It is built as the official harness for GLM models and does not ship support for Claude or GPT, though the license lets you add integrations.
Coding agents write more of the GTM stack every week, and most of them are closed tools you point at your repo and hope. ZCode is the opposite: the whole agentic IDE, client through runtime, is open under Apache-2.0, so you can read what it does with your code instead of trusting a black box. That openness is sharpened by the backstory, it was open-sourced after users worried the earlier tool was uploading repo snapshots to the cloud, which is exactly the kind of thing you can now audit. Two honest limits: it is GLM-first, so using it with Claude or GPT is work you take on, and it is days old as a release. If you run GLM or you value being able to inspect the agent that touches your code, it is worth a look, with the snapshot history in mind.