Follow up Zed upstream updates: subagents via Agent Profiles (agent.profiles in settings.json)

[dyoshikawa]

Summary

Zed shipped a user-configurable agent-orchestration surface — Agent Profiles (agent.profiles.<name> in settings.json) plus Parallel Agents and the spawn_agent tool — that maps onto rulesync's subagents feature, but subagents is currently unsupported for the zed target.

Recent Releases

• Agent Profiles (named tool/model presets per profile): https://zed.dev/docs/ai/agent-profiles
• Parallel Agents + spawn_agent built-in tool (2026-04-22): https://zed.dev/blog/parallel-agents
• Configurable sub-agent models shipped around Zed Stable v1.3.x (release notes: https://zed.dev/releases).

Gaps

• subagents — unsupported for zed, upstream has a file-based agent surface. Zed reads named profiles from agent.profiles.<name> in settings.json, each carrying a tools boolean map, a default_model (provider/model), and context_servers/enable_all_context_servers. rulesync has no zed-subagent.ts adapter and --targets zed --features "*" emits nothing for subagents. rulesync's canonical subagent model (name, description, model, enabled/disabled tools) maps cleanly onto Agent Profiles.

Proposed Follow-up

• Add a ZedSubagent adapter emitting agent.profiles.<name> entries into .zed/settings.json (project) and ~/.config/zed/settings.json (global), translating: name → profile key, model → default_model, enabled/disabled tools → the tools boolean map (reuse the canonical→Zed tool-name map already in zed-permissions.ts). Merge into the shared settings.json non-destructively (same pattern as zed-mcp.ts/zed-permissions.ts, isDeletable()=false).
• Design caveat: Agent Profiles are tool/model presets for a thread rather than autonomously-delegated subagents, so confirm this semantic mapping is acceptable before implementing. Add the Tool × Feature happy-path e2e case for zed subagents.

References

• https://zed.dev/docs/ai/agent-profiles — the agent.profiles.<name> settings surface (model + tools map) this issue proposes to target.
• https://zed.dev/blog/parallel-agents — Parallel Agents / spawn_agent, the orchestration context.
• https://zed.dev/docs/ai/skills — confirms other agent surfaces already tracked; cited for completeness.

[dyoshikawa]

Triage (2026-06-24): keeping open as a tracked follow-up — blocked on a design decision.

This issue proposes mapping rulesync's subagents feature onto Zed's agent.profiles.<name>. As the issue itself flags in its "Design caveat", Zed Agent Profiles are tool/model presets for a thread, not autonomously-delegated subagents the way rulesync's canonical model treats them. That semantic mismatch needs a maintainer decision before any adapter is written — emitting profiles for every rulesync subagent could surface presets that don't behave like delegated agents.

No code change in this batch. Leaving open so the ZedSubagent mapping (profile key ← name, default_model ← model, tools boolean map ← enabled/disabled tools, merged non-destructively into settings.json like zed-mcp.ts/zed-permissions.ts) can be implemented once the profiles→subagents semantic mapping is confirmed acceptable.