ZCode
Ranked 13 of 18 AI coding agents by recommenders
People like its clean UI, Linux support and solid coding quality for GLM models, but critics warn it uploads project folders and git history to a Chinese-owned server.
People like its clean UI, Linux support and solid coding quality for GLM models, but critics warn it uploads project folders and git history to a Chinese-owned server.
68 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 49
- approval share
- 28%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not 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 doesn’t carry the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 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
Solid coding harness quality
“ZCode is honestly one of the best harnesses out there from an HCI perspective”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud” “their ZCode harness is also pretty nice”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 is now live” “their own zcode is really good as well”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “GLM-5.2 is the step change for open agents” - Comment from 15 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities”
- Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities”
Clean, attractive UI
“it is nice that it is there for folks who prefer the Codex App/Claude App UI approach”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM” “Looks quite pretty! Not sure if I want to try that instead of OpenCode”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM” “their UI is really really nice”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities” Improves with frequent updates
“ZCode comes close too (which is surprising, they sorta came out of nowhere and are patching the thing weekly)”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA” “it was actually surprisingly good after they pushed out some updates”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “Claude Code uses Bun written in Rust now” “it's definitely improved over what it was back in the spring”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Strands Harness” Good value on plans
“ZCode is ok and use it to take advantage of the discount tokens on offer from time to time”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities” “The value is good on the $10 plan so I still get decent usage on the desktop client”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM” “Now I'm using it through their Zcode harness and I rarely hit that”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 is now live”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Uploads project data without clear consent
“Works pretty well. Super sketchy though if it is in fact silently uploading full git history”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud” “zcode was not long ago revealed to upload your entire project folder to their server encrypted using a key you don't have”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek-v4.1-Flash-1017” “there is literally no way to opt-out and the client will always ask the backend for credentials to upload”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud” - Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud”
- Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud”
- Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud”
Closed-source black box sent to China
“It is essentially a black box with full user permissions, meaning you are just handing over your entire system to a Chinese-owned server.”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM” “There's no way I would ever put a piece of proprietary Chinese software that gets full system control on anything important.”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM” “Why would I install a close source black box, that will send data to a country that you can't make legally liable”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “ZCode – Harness for GLM-5.2” - Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “ZCode: Claude Code from the Makers of GLM”
Quality still unproven
“It shows potential, answer/code quality was solid, but I would need more time with it.”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “ZCode – Harness for GLM-5.2” “I don't know if I got my money's worth before I have seen the deliverable.”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud” Tied to GLM models only
“ZCode is great. But as tied to GLM as CC is to Claude models”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 on Hacker News “wonder why anyone would use this when GLM-5.2 is available in multiple coding harnesses already”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “ZCode – Harness for GLM-5.2”
Other AI coding agents people recommend
The four most recommended other AI coding agents, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | 4,522 | 3,788 | 54% | 13 | 6 mo417 owners | — |
| OpenAI Codex | 2,474 | 1,289 | 66% | 13 | 3 mo165 owners | — |
| OpenCode | 1,060 | 572 | 65% | 13 | 2 mo41 owners | — |
| Gemini CLI | 172 | 321 | 35% | 12 | 3 mo9 owners | — |
| ZCodeThis page | 19 | 49 | 28% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 82 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“zcode was not long ago revealed to upload your entire project folder to their server encrypted using a key you don't have”
“it works around the clock for me off of my redmine queue”
“it's definitely improved over what it was back in the spring”
“ZCode is great. But as tied to GLM as CC is to Claude models”
“I don't know if I got my money's worth before I have seen the deliverable.”
“there is literally no way to opt-out and the client will always ask the backend for credentials to upload”
“Because this feature was enabled by default in its early launch period, some users were affected.”
“there is not a single mention of silently packaging and uploading entire workspaces”
“ZCode is honestly one of the best harnesses out there from an HCI perspective”
“Works pretty well. Super sketchy though if it is in fact silently uploading full git history”
“the uploaded content is encrypted using a key that the users don't have”
“Meanwhile my Ass in ZCode with GLM c:”
“I can kinda see why ZCode copied them a bunch”
“And she's delighted with the process, even seeing its flaws”
“the harness is genuinely good”
“ZCode was surprisingly usable for something”
“ZCode was surprisingly usable for something that came out of nowhere”
“their UI is really really nice”
“ZCode is ok and use it to take advantage of the discount tokens on offer from time to time”
“ZCode was surprisingly good”
“ZCode comes close too (which is surprising, they sorta came out of nowhere and are patching the thing weekly)”
“Personally, I still liked ZCode better”
“it was actually surprisingly good after they pushed out some updates”
“their ZCode harness is also pretty nice”
“Now I'm using it through their Zcode harness and I rarely hit that”
“Used it for a bit, it sits somewhere between OpenCode Desktop (still new but nice) and Claude Desktop”
“wonder why anyone would use this when GLM-5.2 is available in multiple coding harnesses already”
“Why would I install a close source black box, that will send data to a country that you can't make legally liable”
“It shows potential, answer/code quality was solid, but I would need more time with it.”
“i'd really wish this was a CLI and not a GUI”
“The app itself is interesting to me.”
“The value is good on the $10 plan so I still get decent usage on the desktop client”
“There's no way I would ever put a piece of proprietary Chinese software that gets full system control on anything important.”
“There is no reason for this to exist but there IS a reason it is not open source.”
“It is essentially a black box with full user permissions, meaning you are just handing over your entire system to a Chinese-owned server.”
“Looks quite pretty! Not sure if I want to try that instead of OpenCode”
“kudos to the Z.ai team for adding Linux support from day one”
“it is nice that it is there for folks who prefer the Codex App/Claude App UI approach”
“their own zcode is really good as well”
“That's as "easy" as it is for non-devs that you're complaining about.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.