JetBrains will collaborate with Zed to bring the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) to their IDEs

JetBrains has announced a collaboration with Zed to co-develop the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), a protocol designed to streamline how code editors and intelligent agents interact. This partnership follows the introduction of ACP just a month ago, and marks a coordinated effort by both companies to foster greater interoperability.

Extending from this, JetBrains plans to bring ACP support to its full suite of IDEs, including IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, PhpStorm, WebStorm, and other tools within its ecosystem. This move will give developers the flexibility to use any ACP-compatible agent inside the editors they already use, widening choices beyond native integrations.

After exploring standard approaches to agent support for both their own agent, Junie, and third-party agents like Codex and Gemini CLI, JetBrains determined — following discussions with Zed — that ACP was the preferred path forward. With JetBrains onboard, ACP is poised to become a standard for agent integration with code editors and other developer tools.

The protocol itself separates agents from editors. Developers build a single ACP implementation, ensuring compatibility with any editor that adopts the protocol. This reduces the need for repeated custom integrations and eliminates vendor lock-in for users, enabling agents of choice within familiar development environments.