Zed v1.8 adds agent.terminal_init_command and faster Git operations

• Zed v1.8 adds agent.terminal_init_command, which runs automatically whenever a new terminal thread opens in the agent panel, according to zeddotdev's v1.8 announcement.
• The release also adds two small editor commands, with zeddotdev's commands post introducing delimiter-aware selection expansion and pane-size reset.
• Performance work in zeddotdev's Git update targets Git-heavy paths like HEAD resolution, uncommit, remote listing, and default-branch lookups, while zeddotdev's follow-up says diff scrolling, multi-cursor editing, and markdown preview search are faster too.
• A teaser screenshot in zeddotdev's preview post shows a zed.dev provider using gpt-5.5 with enable_thinking and effort: "high", and zeddotdev's reply says that UI is still preview-only and headed to stable next week.

You can watch the terminal init demo, open the full v1.8 changelog, and inspect

that quietly shows a gpt-5.5 model entry plus thinking controls.

Zed's headline feature is narrow and useful: every new agent terminal thread can now start with a project-specific bootstrap command.

The demo in Zed's terminal-init video shows the setting being added in config, then firing automatically when a fresh agent-panel terminal opens. That turns repetitive setup steps into part of the agent session itself, not a manual first command.

Most of the rest of v1.8 is speed work, especially around Git.

Zed lists these Git-path improvements:

• faster HEAD resolution
• faster uncommit
• faster remote listing
• faster default-branch lookups
• fewer Git processes spawned during normal work

Separate from Git, zeddotdev's performance follow-up says diff scrolling, multi-cursor editing, and markdown preview search all got faster.

The feature list is smaller but concrete. According to zeddotdev's commands post, v1.8 adds:

• editor: select inside delimiters
• editor: select around delimiters
• workspace: reset pane sizes

A day after the release thread, Zed posted a screenshot that exposes a bit more of its agent settings surface.

The image shows a zed.dev provider with model: "gpt-5.5", enable_thinking: true, and effort: "high" in the settings modal. When asked where that UI lives, zeddotdev's sidebar reply said it is available from the sidebar.

Availability is not general yet. In zeddotdev's preview-status reply, Zed said the feature is preview-only for now and on its way to stable next week.