Hey HN, I'm Saai, one of the creators of Sylix. I made this open-minded version of Cursor where you can get all of the core features of Cursor but in a fully customizable IDE (Ctrl+K, @docs, parallel agents). We love Cursor so much, but there are so many other features we're building, including all things like multi-edit, parallel swaps, agent indexing (but not the traditional one), parallel LSP, or maybe... we might give agents a better understanding of the codebase via multi-semantic memory instead, alongside in-search grep for your system files or workspace. Sylix will be open source once it's stable, but it's a fully customizable tool we've been wanting!
Sorry for the delay; well, it's almost a year now. Well, I know developers were waiting for this.
The hard part: we're building Sylix not as a traditional fork of VS Code but as a mixer of all things; Sylix is built on top of Monaco Editor along with the Monaco Editor API, backed natively in Rust. The VS Code repo helps a lot, along with its great documentation about the src/workbench files extension, but it's great as we got into it pretty deep. Since we leveraged the monaco-vscode-api, it was easy for us to embed it nicely into our React code. So it was a pretty decent thing for adding a new feature alongside a new UI. For Sylix, all the core systems behind all things built in Rust are done; building just a little polish over the UI is a task since we are not UI designers,s though. Now two things left: a polished UI and the marketplace for Sylix, since we already figured out how we canroute then extension core; just the UI left. One thing we're excited about is how we make things work out after trying over and over a VS Code fork, Void fork, and VS Code 1.58; after trying all those things, it finally works. It's like this: maybe the 6th or 7th version of Sylix works for us.
The other benefit is that Sylix is going to be open source once it has a stable version, so we don't need to hide our prompts from what we built. We let you use Cursor's core features and functions right on your machine along with any of your existing subscriptions (like Codex, Claude Code, Kimi K3, DeepSeek) while we are working on it so that you can also use OpenCode Go as a provider. Sylix supports over 120+ models via your own providers; any model you want this lets you completely control your own data, and on-prem, a hosted model.
There is a lot to talk about: how we build, and full disclosure, we have passed most of the early phase and currently have around 43 developers using it with their own subscription... thank you to them; we have come so far through their feedback. But we're super excited to cover the gap alongside Cursor.
Let us know if there is anything you want to see Cursor-style in an actual Free Editor. Or feel free to shoot us a message.
How does it compare to Zed? I feel like they have similar goals, no?
Good question. I will tell it in an easy way
Like, see both Zed and Sylix start from similar places (Rust, not a VS Code fork, "editors feel bloated, let's rebuild"), but their goals diverge pretty quickly. Zed's original focus was on real-time collaborative editing — multiplayer, Google Docs for code, buttery smooth rendering. AI was added later on top of that. Sylix, on the other hand, is AI-first from day one — built around the Cursor version 2.0 style workflow (minimobs, parallel agents, Element browse) but on your own subscriptions or keys instead of locking you into one model. We're built on Monaco and the monaco-vscode API, natively in Rust, giving us much of VS Code's extension ecosystem without actually forking VS Code.
Hi Saai, where can I find any info about the company & people behind the project? Terms and other docs on the page don't say much, About page is not about the company etc.
The project looks very impressive!
Heyy jensabacik, Thanks for reaching out! I’m glad to hear you find the project impressive. For more information about the company and the team behind the project, we are a few indie devs and some freelance students working on this; we are not a company yet. It's just a bootstrapped Startup for now, and you can also find more about this: https://sylixide.com/about/
The about page has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. All you get is five first names.
I'm not sure what is meant by "we're building in the open" if it's a closed-source project with no person attached to it.
There are also big quality issues on the existing page content. At some point you write that "Around 43 developers are using it right now" just to follow up a bit later with "Join thousands of developers who are moving faster with ...".
With a quick search, I was able to find one potential match on LinkedIn, where someone is associating with the project.
Another potentially validating find was someone's uploaded Prezi on the project.
I really do wish you luck with the project. But it would be great if it develops to a stage where you do not avoid associating with it as much.
Hey, I apologize for that—you're absolutely right.
I also realized that I didn’t introduce myself properly. My name is Sairaj Ambekar, but you can call me Saai. I’m 17 years old, a full-stack developer, and the co-founder of Sylix. We refrained from providing details on the About page because we weren't comfortable revealing our identities before we open-source the project. You were correct to point this out.
If you're interested, we will soon update the About page. After considering your feedback, I made several important changes.
Firstly, we removed the phrase “building in the open” because it didn’t accurately describe Sylix, which is currently closed-source. We plan to open-source it later when it's stable, as we mainly write the UI code ourselves for now. I want to be honest about its current status.
Secondly, we clarified the user numbers. It was misleading to state that we had "around 43 users" in one instance and "thousands" in another. We currently have about 43 early users who are using their own OpenCode or Claude API; however, most of them use DeepSeek, and that is now clearly stated.
Finally, we rewrote the About page to better reflect who is building Sylix, rather than relying on descriptions; more will be updated soon.
“yo bro we should have claude code fork vscode, but tell it to add AI”
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