Gram editor
Hacker ApprovedRanked 17 of 56 text editors by recommenders
People recommend Gram as a Zed fork with the terms of service, telemetry and AI removed, leaving a fast text editor. Some dependencies remain.
People recommend Gram as a Zed fork with the terms of service, telemetry and AI removed, leaving a fast text editor. Some dependencies remain.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 96%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 25 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Removes AI, telemetry and terms of service
“It does come with all the drawbacks of disabling AI, telemetry, phone-home and attempting to protect your privacy.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0” “Gram is a hard fork that removes the TOS, telemetry and AI, and turns Zed into just a text editor.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Zed will require age identification for its services” “It strips all the weird parts and leaves just the editor.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0” - Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Zed new terms required to be 18 years old”
- Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Zed DeltaDB”
- Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Zed: Delta”
Lightweight, fast editor
“It strips all the weird parts and leaves just the editor.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0” “Thanks for the link of this unbloated version of Zed.”
Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Zed new terms required to be 18 years old” “it worked well as a low-spec devbox”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025)” - Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0”
Actively maintained and sensible
“Someone actually sensible, excellent.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Software Is Made Between Commits” “Oh, that's a breath of fresh air.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Software Is Made Between Commits” “It's actively maintained.”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Zed DeltaDB” Fixes annoyances with Zed
“Looks like it fixes all of my annoyances with Zed; I'll have to try it out.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Software Is Made Between Commits” “The Gram fork of Zed is pretty good, though.”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Sublime Text Build 4213”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Still has some dependencies
“still has some dependencies I'd rather not deal with”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Rune 1.1: adds Python, an Emacs editor, a symbol index and is now free” Few people use it
“BUT it cant be interpreted or aligned <- this is why no one uses it and no one talks about it.”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “Claude Opus 4.8”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| Gram editorThis page | 25 | 1 | 96% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
22 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Was happy to see someone forked Zed into "Gram"”
“it worked well as a low-spec devbox”
“The Gram fork of Zed is pretty good, though.”
“a fork of Zed without the AI”
“all the AI stuff is disabled by default”
“hate their decisions on non fixing bugs”
“It's actively maintained.”
“still has some dependencies I'd rather not deal with”
“Someone actually sensible, excellent.”
“Looks like it fixes all of my annoyances with Zed; I'll have to try it out.”
“Oh, that's a breath of fresh air.”
“GRAM is reasoning better than models 2000-10,000x its size.”
“BUT it cant be interpreted or aligned <- this is why no one uses it and no one talks about it.”
“It strips all the weird parts and leaves just the editor.”
“It does come with all the drawbacks of disabling AI, telemetry, phone-home and attempting to protect your privacy.”
“They are both nice, fast editors.”
“such a dark and gloomy quote as the mission statement”
“Thanks for the link of this unbloated version of Zed.”
“Gram is a hard fork that removes the TOS, telemetry and AI, and turns Zed into just a text editor.”
“it's let me implement and play with cool web features”
“This is an interesting approach and I just saw your post on reddit too, good stuff!”
“Now users can launch MCP servers that only have 3 tools, search, describe, execute.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.