zed-workspace-snapshots

Named workspace snapshots for Zed.

Zed already remembers recent sessions, but it does not give you an explicit "save this multi-folder setup as a named workspace" flow. This tool fills that gap by saving the latest multi-folder workspace from Zed's local SQLite database and reopening it later through the zed CLI.

It is for people who regularly work across many repos at once and want commands like:

zed-workspace save cqr-stack
zed-workspace save customer-a --workspace 12
zed-workspace save-visible day-start
zed-workspace open cqr-stack

Why

• Save a 5 to 30 folder Zed setup with a human name
• Reopen a known project stack without relying on "whatever Zed restored last"
• Keep multiple named contexts for different clients, products, or debugging sessions
• Layer on top of Zed without patching Zed itself

How it works

• Reads the latest workspace from Zed's local DB
• Can target a specific live workspace row by workspace id
• Can save all currently visible Zed workspaces in one command
• Stores the current folder list as a JSON snapshot
• Reopens that snapshot later with the zed CLI
• Captures open-tab metadata when Zed has already persisted it, including approximate line position
• Captures terminal working-directory metadata and prints restore hints on open

Scope

What works:

• Multi-folder workspace snapshots
• Named save, list, show, delete, and reopen flows
• Live workspace selection with workspaces and save --workspace <id>
• One-step capture of all visible windows with save-visible [prefix]
• Simple local install with no extra dependencies beyond node, sqlite3, and zed
• Terminal working directories are captured for later reference

Current limits:

• Folder restore is reliable
• Open-tab restore is best effort and depends on what Zed has already written to its DB
• Pane layout, active focus, and terminal recreation are not yet restored
• Terminal restore is currently hint-based, not automatic terminal creation

Requirements

• macOS
• node
• sqlite3
• zed on your PATH

The default Zed database path used by this tool is:

~/Library/Application Support/Zed/db/0-stable/db.sqlite

Install

npm

npm install -g zed-workspace-snapshots

Quick start

zed-workspace workspaces
zed-workspace save infra --workspace 12
zed-workspace save-visible day-start
zed-workspace open infra

Local install

mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
ln -sf "$PWD/zed-workspace.js" "$HOME/.local/bin/zed-workspace"
chmod +x ./zed-workspace.js

Usage

zed-workspace save cqr-stack
zed-workspace save cqr-stack --workspace 12
zed-workspace save-visible
zed-workspace save-visible day-start
zed-workspace workspaces
zed-workspace list
zed-workspace show cqr-stack
zed-workspace delete old-stack
zed-workspace open cqr-stack

Snapshot storage

• Snapshot JSON files: ~/.config/zed-workspace-snapshots
• Source of truth for live Zed workspace state: ~/Library/Application Support/Zed/db/0-stable/db.sqlite

Environment variables

• ZED_DB_PATH: override the Zed SQLite DB path
• ZED_WORKSPACE_STORE_DIR: override where snapshots are stored

Example use cases

• zed-workspace save customer-a
• zed-workspace save infra-debug
• zed-workspace save quarter-end-release
• zed-workspace save-visible day-start

Positioning

Named workspace snapshots for Zed power users

That is sharper than generic "workspace management" because Zed already has automatic session restore. The real gap is explicit, reusable, named saves for complex multi-folder setups.

Roadmap

• Better automatic terminal restoration
• Better best-effort tab reopening
• Optional shell completions
• Homebrew or npm distribution

License

MIT