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Trae: The New AI-Powered IDE from ByteDance
A new competitor has entered the scene — Trae. Unlike the typical VC-funded startups or open-source community projects, Trae is developed by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. This raises an interesting question: is Trae the future of AI-assisted development, or just another experimental side project that may disappear?
What is Trae?
Trae is an AI-integrated IDE that promises to revolutionize development by seamlessly balancing human and AI capabilities. Unlike many other AI-driven development tools, Trae offers a dynamic collaboration between the developer and AI, automatically selecting the best agent for a given task.
It’s unclear whether ByteDance plans to charge for it in the future, but its current accessibility makes it an intriguing option for developers curious about AI-powered coding assistance.
First Impressions
Setting up Trae was smooth. Upon opening it, I immediately noticed that it wasn’t a completely new editor but rather a fork of VS Code. My extensions were already present, confirming its VS Code foundation. However, the UI is notably more polished compared to other VS Code clones like Cursor. The layout is clean, visually appealing, and makes better use of screen real…
