{"slug": "zcode", "name": "ZCode", "category": "ai-coding", "category_name": "AI coding tools", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 9, "warners": 2, "score": 1.814, "rising": 3.0, "first": "2026-07-01", "latest": "2026-09-29", "why": "ZCode was surprisingly good, which is surprising for a tool that came out of nowhere", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 3, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "ZCode was surprisingly good, which is surprising for a tool that came out of nowhere", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/zai-org/zcode", "official_url": "https://github.com/zai-org/zcode", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["ZCode", "Zcode", "Z Code"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 798406802, "item_id": 49900425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49900425", "by": "reachableceo", "date": "2026-09-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am using zcode with GLM5.3 flash from z.ai", "excerpt": "I mean it\u2019s not exactly tin foil hat. I suspect when we see the s1 drop for these companies , the business plan will be essentially exactly what you just said. OpenWebUI has allowed me to avoid this. Combined with OpenTerminal. I am using zcode with GLM5.3 flash from z.ai due to the extra usage / air drops etc . However nothing I\u2019m doing is tied to that harness. When I moved from crush to Zcode , the first thing I di", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent harness", "switched_from": "Crush", "story": "Dots: Always-on agents"}, {"id": 789040897, "item_id": 49315056, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49315056", "by": "ryan-a", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Using it exclusively in zcode because of the usage multiplier + the harness is genuinely good.", "excerpt": "I used the legacy plan with only the 5 hour limits on lite. It was super awesome but sadly not comparable to the new plan. Currently I am on the new max plan with the 5hr limits and weekly limits, I can't speak for the credit plan. Using it exclusively in zcode because of the usage multiplier + the harness is genuinely good. Easily do a billion tokens per week on my limits and generally have no problems with limits, ", "context": "", "use_case": "coding harness for GLM", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities"}, {"id": 788729120, "item_id": 49295570, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49295570", "by": "KronisLV", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "ZCode was surprisingly good, which is surprising for a tool that came out of nowhere", "excerpt": "Their coding plan switched to credits, didn\u2019t it? What are the rate limits like, compared to Anthropic or Kimi K3? I remember trying their Coding Plan out before the change and the 5 hour limits felt too restrictive then even for light/medium work, especially cause of the whole peak and off-peak thing: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/z-ai-s-glm-5-2-is-a-great-model-but-is-it-good-value/ Nowadays, I\u2019d probably go with th", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796106816, "item_id": 49756676, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49756676", "by": "wyrdcurt", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "ZCode is pretty bloated anyway, in my experience.", "excerpt": "ZCode is pretty bloated anyway, in my experience. I used it for a while because Z.ai offers a subscription usage multiplier for using it, but despite that, I found myself hitting limits less often when I switched to Pi (and performance is the same, if not better).", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud"}, {"id": 788738768, "item_id": 49296173, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296173", "by": "petesergeant", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Their own hardness (ZCode) seems to be a GUI, which doesn't work for me.", "excerpt": "Their own hardness (ZCode) seems to be a GUI, which doesn't work for me. They say they support other harnesses. However, it seems like I can inject the plan into other harnesses, like Claude Code[0]. Does anyone who's been using GLM models for a while have a strong feeling for if it does better in some harnesses than others, or should I just use my favourite harness? 0: https://docs.z.ai/devpack/tool/others", "context": "", "use_case": "coding harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["coding agent harness", "coding harness for glm", "coding harness", "agentic coding", "coding agent desktop app"], "compared": [{"slug": "glm", "name": "GLM", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "pi", "name": "Pi", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "crush", "name": "Crush", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "codex", "name": "Codex", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294997", "title": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896604", "title": "Dots: Always-on agents", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810164", "title": "Z.ai uploading local code repos to overseas cloud without consent", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750694", "title": "Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49449507", "title": "GLM-5.3-Flash", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753715", "title": "ZCode \u2013 Harness for GLM-5.2", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"compare": 2}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-09": {"warn": 1, "neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 798406802, "item_id": 49900425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49900425", "by": "reachableceo", "date": "2026-09-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am using zcode with GLM5.3 flash from z.ai", "excerpt": "I mean it\u2019s not exactly tin foil hat. I suspect when we see the s1 drop for these companies , the business plan will be essentially exactly what you just said. OpenWebUI has allowed me to avoid this. Combined with OpenTerminal. I am using zcode with GLM5.3 flash from z.ai due to the extra usage / air drops etc . However nothing I\u2019m doing is tied to that harness. When I moved from crush to Zcode , the first thing I di", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent harness", "switched_from": "Crush", "story": "Dots: Always-on agents"}, {"id": 796970304, "item_id": 49810644, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810644", "by": "verdverm", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "They did open source ZCode in response", "excerpt": "They did open source ZCode in response https://github.com/zai-org/ZCode", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Z.ai uploading local code repos to overseas cloud without consent"}, {"id": 796106816, "item_id": 49756676, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49756676", "by": "wyrdcurt", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "ZCode is pretty bloated anyway, in my experience.", "excerpt": "ZCode is pretty bloated anyway, in my experience. I used it for a while because Z.ai offers a subscription usage multiplier for using it, but despite that, I found myself hitting limits less often when I switched to Pi (and performance is the same, if not better).", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud"}, {"id": 791214194, "item_id": 49450887, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450887", "by": "lxe", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "it looks like Z Code is just a Codex fork.", "excerpt": "Is the actual Z.AI ecosystem good enough to replace the main drivers like Codex and Claude? Because it looks like Z Code is just a Codex fork. Just like the Kimi Code one is. What irks me about this is that the harnesses seem to be just an afterthought here. Don't get me wrong, I love messing around with installing Pi, getting it hooked up with OpenRouter, and just trying all kinds of different stuff, local models, e", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3-Flash"}, {"id": 789040897, "item_id": 49315056, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49315056", "by": "ryan-a", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Using it exclusively in zcode because of the usage multiplier + the harness is genuinely good.", "excerpt": "I used the legacy plan with only the 5 hour limits on lite. It was super awesome but sadly not comparable to the new plan. Currently I am on the new max plan with the 5hr limits and weekly limits, I can't speak for the credit plan. Using it exclusively in zcode because of the usage multiplier + the harness is genuinely good. Easily do a billion tokens per week on my limits and generally have no problems with limits, ", "context": "", "use_case": "coding harness for GLM", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities"}, {"id": 788738768, "item_id": 49296173, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296173", "by": "petesergeant", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Their own hardness (ZCode) seems to be a GUI, which doesn't work for me.", "excerpt": "Their own hardness (ZCode) seems to be a GUI, which doesn't work for me. They say they support other harnesses. However, it seems like I can inject the plan into other harnesses, like Claude Code[0]. Does anyone who's been using GLM models for a while have a strong feeling for if it does better in some harnesses than others, or should I just use my favourite harness? 0: https://docs.z.ai/devpack/tool/others", "context": "", "use_case": "coding harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities"}, {"id": 788729120, "item_id": 49295570, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49295570", "by": "KronisLV", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "ZCode was surprisingly good, which is surprising for a tool that came out of nowhere", "excerpt": "Their coding plan switched to credits, didn\u2019t it? What are the rate limits like, compared to Anthropic or Kimi K3? I remember trying their Coding Plan out before the change and the 5 hour limits felt too restrictive then even for light/medium work, especially cause of the whole peak and off-peak thing: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/z-ai-s-glm-5-2-is-a-great-model-but-is-it-good-value/ Nowadays, I\u2019d probably go with th", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities"}, {"id": 780113955, "item_id": 48757122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757122", "by": "razfar", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "how does GLM-5.2/ZCode compare", "excerpt": "For anyone who uses GPT-5.5/Codex as their daily driver how does GLM-5.2/ZCode compare, esp in a codebase already set up for agentic coding?", "context": "", "use_case": "agentic coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "ZCode \u2013 Harness for GLM-5.2"}, {"id": 780034049, "item_id": 48752128, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48752128", "by": "seizethecheese", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'm somewhat surprised that this is not open source", "excerpt": "I'm somewhat surprised that this is not open source (from what I can tell). Compare to Mimo Code https://github.com/XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code (which is a CLI, while this is a desktop app).", "context": "", "use_case": "coding agent desktop app", "switched_from": "", "story": "ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM"}]}