--- title: Xanadu Was Waiting for Agents — Zed's Blog | daily.dev description: Zed's founder connects Ted Nelson's 1960s Project Xanadu vision of hypertext (transclusion, versioning, xanalogical links) to the design of DeltaDB and Delta,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Xanadu Was Waiting for Agents — Zed's Blog | daily.dev og:description: Zed's founder connects Ted Nelson's 1960s Project Xanadu vision of hypertext (transclusion, versioning, xanalogical links) to the design of DeltaDB and Delta,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Lit73YsRa.png og:image:alt: Xanadu Was Waiting for Agents — Zed's Blog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Xanadu Was Waiting for Agents — Zed's Blog **[Zed](https://daily.dev/sources/zed)** · 8 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Zed's founder connects Ted Nelson's 1960s Project Xanadu vision of hypertext (transclusion, versioning, xanalogical links) to the design of DeltaDB and Delta, Zed's new system for capturing agent-code collaboration. The piece argues that agents, unlike humans, can and will follow every link and read every version, finally supplying the 'perfect user' Xanadu lacked. It traces the technical lineage (Lamport timestamps, Merkle trees/Git, CRDTs, cheap storage, fast networks, microVMs, Tree-sitter/GPUI) that made building Delta possible, and describes how Delta threads preserve conversation and code history as git-compatible fragments with stable anchors. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is DeltaDB and how does it represent code differently from a normal git repository? DeltaDB represents files as fragments with stable identities rather than flat text, layering causal metadata such as which operation produced each fragment and what prior state it built on. This lets it create anchors, references to spans that remain resolvable after surrounding code changes, so agents can traverse a file's current state alongside its provenance and prior reasoning. Every Delta thread is also a git branch, keeping it interoperable with existing repos. _Developers evaluating agent-native version control tools can follow this design thinking on daily.dev._ ### What historical technologies had to exist before Ted Nelson's Xanadu hypertext vision could actually be built? Xanadu needed Lamport timestamps (1978) for ordering events without a central clock, Merkle trees (1979, made practical by Git in 2005) for tamper-proof naming, CRDTs (formalized 2011) for coordination-free convergence, storage cheap enough to never delete, always-on broadband, Firecracker-class microVMs (2018) for instant machine provisioning, and Tree-sitter (2018) for fast reparsing — all of which now underpin Zed's DeltaDB. _Engineers tracing how decades-old research becomes shippable infrastructure can find this lineage on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Software Is Made Between Commits — Zed's Blog](https://daily.dev/posts/software-is-made-between-commits-zed-s-blog-85az94983) · Zed · 43 upvotes · 5 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#version-control](https://daily.dev/tags/version-control), [#zed](https://daily.dev/tags/zed), [#crdt](https://daily.dev/tags/crdt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Xanadu Was Waiting for Agents — Zed's Blog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra"},"datePublished":"2026-09-01T16:23:49.578Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T20:11:56.456Z","description":"Zed's founder connects Ted Nelson's 1960s Project Xanadu vision of hypertext (transclusion, versioning, xanalogical links) to the design of DeltaDB and Delta,...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/506c26c8dd3197cd6f7770a7957e844d?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/506c26c8dd3197cd6f7770a7957e844d?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Zed","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Zed","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/6048f0f184b149f394a08a0f835fd052","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/zed"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-agents,version-control,zed,crdt","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Zed","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/zed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Xanadu Was Waiting for Agents — Zed's Blog"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/xanadu-was-waiting-for-agents-zed-s-blog-lit73ysra#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is DeltaDB and how does it represent code differently from a normal git repository?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"DeltaDB represents files as fragments with stable identities rather than flat text, layering causal metadata such as which operation produced each fragment and what prior state it built on. 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