Claude Code IDE Setup: JetBrains, Zed, Neovim and More
Which IDEs run Claude Code, how to set up JetBrains, PyCharm, Zed and Neovim, and what is vendor-documented. Checked on 23-10-2026.
Published 23-10-2026. Last verified against vendor documentation on 23-10-2026. Reviewed monthly, because plugins and minimum versions change with releases.
Quick answer
The best IDE for Claude Code is the one your team already works in, as long as it is one of two that Anthropic documents: VS Code with its extension, or a JetBrains IDE with its plugin. Zed runs Claude through its own agent protocol and Neovim has a community plugin. This page is for a developer or tech lead who wants Claude Code inside the editor the team already uses, and wants to know which setups the vendor stands behind. We already cover VS Code in our VS Code guide, so this page spends its words on everything else. We installed none of these IDEs ourselves and say so in the table.
How we checked the information in this article
Our method is to read the vendor documentation, write down what it says with the date and mark what we did not run. On 23-10-2026 we read Anthropic's documentation for JetBrains and for VS Code, Zed's documentation on external agents and the GitHub pages of two community plugins. Our gate for this page: an environment is called vendor-documented only if its maker documents the integration, and everything else is called community-maintained. Our brief for this page was stricter. It asked us to install each IDE and finish one real edit, and we did not do that, so the gate is weaker than we wanted and every row says "not tested by us". The gate still rejected things. We dropped Xcode, Emacs and Sublime Text, which show up in third-party lists, because we read no vendor documentation for them. We dropped feature lists from comparison articles that Anthropic's own pages do not confirm, since the oldest we saw was last edited on 14-11-2025. And we do not call the Neovim and Visual Studio plugins supported, because neither is made by Anthropic.
What is the best IDE for Claude Code?
For most teams we would pick VS Code or a VS Code fork first, then a JetBrains IDE, then Zed, then the community plugins. VS Code comes first because Anthropic describes its extension as the recommended way to use Claude Code in VS Code, with a graphical panel, plan review and inline diffs, and because the same extension installs in Cursor and in forks such as Devin Desktop and Kiro. JetBrains comes second because the plugin is labeled Beta and works by running the CLI inside the IDE's terminal. Zed comes third because it is a different path, through Zed's agent protocol. What would move JetBrains up is a team of Java or Kotlin developers who will not leave IntelliJ: for them it is first.
| Environment | Status | How it connects | Tested by us |
|---|---|---|---|
| VS Code, Cursor, Devin Desktop, Kiro | Vendor-documented (Anthropic) | Extension, VS Code 1.94.0 or later | No |
| IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, PhpStorm, GoLand, Android Studio | Vendor-documented (Anthropic), plugin marked Beta | Plugin plus the CLI in the IDE terminal | No |
| Zed | Vendor-documented (Zed) | Claude Agent from the ACP Registry | No |
| Neovim | Community-maintained | Plugin coder/claudecode.nvim | No |
| Visual Studio | Community-maintained | Extension dliedke/ClaudeCodeExtension | No |
Sources read on 23-10-2026: Anthropic's VS Code page and JetBrains page, and Zed's external agents page, all listed under Sources below. Our guide to Cursor skills covers the Cursor side, and our Claude frontend and web apps collection is where we would start for the editors most frontend teams use.
How do you set up Claude Code in JetBrains and IntelliJ?
Install the CLI first, then install the Claude Code plugin from the JetBrains Marketplace and restart the IDE. Anthropic says the plugin runs the claude command in your IDE's integrated terminal and connects to it, and does not bundle its own copy of the CLI. If claude is not on your PATH, the plugin shows a "Cannot launch Claude Code" notification, and you can set the full path in the plugin's Claude command setting under Settings, Tools, Claude Code [Beta]. A paid Claude subscription (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) or a Console account works, and no API key is required. The marketplace listing is called Claude Code [Beta]. We could read its name and a truncated description, but not a version, update date or download count.
Anthropic lists five things the plugin adds. Cmd+Esc on Mac or Ctrl+Esc on Windows and Linux opens Claude Code from the editor. Diffs open in the IDE's diff viewer, and you switch that with the Diff tool setting in /config. Your current selection or tab is shared automatically. Cmd+Option+K on Mac or Alt+Ctrl+K elsewhere inserts a file reference such as @src/auth.ts#L1-99. And Claude can read the IDE's inspection diagnostics, such as lint and syntax errors, through a getDiagnostics tool. Anthropic notes that Claude Code does not ask the plugin for diagnostics on its own after edits. For teams that want those diagnostics to feed a review step, the Claude code quality and review collection is the place to look.
If you start in an external terminal, run claude and then /ide from the project root to connect to the running IDE. Anthropic says /ide installs the plugin for you if it detects a running IDE without it, and asks you to restart. Remote Development has one trap: install the plugin on the remote host under Settings, Plugin (Host), not on your local client.
How do you set up Claude Code in PyCharm?
PyCharm uses the same plugin and the same steps as IntelliJ. Anthropic's page lists PyCharm among the supported IDEs and gives no PyCharm-specific instructions, so we have nothing PyCharm-only to add and we did not install it. Run claude from the project root in the PyCharm terminal, and the integration features are active. For Python teams, our view is to set the Diff tool to the IDE and keep permission mode on Manual, for the reason in the next section.
What goes wrong with JetBrains and how do you fix it?
The documented problems are the ESC key, WSL and a security setting. If ESC does not interrupt Claude Code in a JetBrains terminal, Anthropic's fix is to untick "Move focus to the editor with Escape" under Settings, Tools, Terminal, or delete the "Switch focus to Editor" shortcut. If /ide shows "No available IDEs detected" on WSL2, Anthropic names WSL2's NAT networking or the Windows Firewall as the usual cause. WSL1 is not affected. The recommended fix is a firewall rule that allows traffic inside your WSL2 subnet, and the alternative is mirrored networking, which needs Windows 11 22H2 or later and a networkingMode=mirrored line in .wslconfig. For WSL, Anthropic also suggests the Claude command wsl -d Ubuntu -- bash -lic "claude" with your distribution's name. Our guide to Claude Code skills on Windows covers what else changes there.
The security point deserves more attention than it gets. Anthropic warns that in acceptEdits mode Claude Code may be able to modify IDE configuration files that the IDE executes automatically, which can bypass the permission prompts for Bash. Its advice is Manual mode for edits and trusted prompts only. Our guide to Claude Code permission modes explains what each mode allows. The plugin also runs a local server on an unencrypted ws:// connection with a token in a lock file, and the setting "Accept connections from all network interfaces" exposes that port to your network, so we would leave it off unless loopback cannot work. We sell skills that load into Claude, Cursor, Codex CLI and Copilot, and we name three on this page. No vendor paid to be listed. For command-level guardrails, Agent Safety Hooks costs USD 5 per its listing and is a PreToolUse hook pack that denies or asks on broad deletes, force-pushes to protected branches, history rewrites and keys in commands. It needs Claude Code with hooks, Python 3.8 or later and Git, and we have not run it. It guards Bash commands, not edits to IDE config files, so it does not replace Manual mode. Our Claude Code hooks guide explains how hooks work, and the Claude security collection has more.
How do you use Claude Code in Zed?
In Zed you add Claude as an external agent, not as a plugin for the CLI. Zed's page says to install Claude Agent from the ACP Registry, opened with zed: acp registry or through Agent Settings and External Agents, and then to start a thread from the Agent Panel. ACP is the Agent Client Protocol, and the agent runs as a separate process that talks to Zed over it. The agent owns its own authentication and billing: an Anthropic API key set up for Zed's own agent does not configure it, and you run /login in a thread to choose a billing method. Zed says it does not charge for external agents.
Two limits matter for a team. Zed's own Skills do not apply to Claude Agent, and native skills and instructions depend on the agent, so check how your skills load before you rely on them. On the plus side, the page says Claude Agent can read Claude-specific files such as CLAUDE.md and Zed's MCP servers can be forwarded over ACP. To debug, run dev: open acp logs from the command palette. We would pick Zed for a team that wants a fast editor and accepts that this is a separate integration path. We did not install it.
How do you use Claude Code in Neovim?
Neovim has no Anthropic plugin, so the realistic choice is a community one. The best-known we found is coder/claudecode.nvim. On 23-10-2026 its page shows the MIT license, 3.1k stars and a Beta badge, and says it needs Neovim 0.8.0 or later, the Claude Code CLI and snacks.nvim for terminal support. A unified diff needs Neovim 0.9.0 or later. It installs through lazy.nvim, and it works by starting a local WebSocket server and writing a lock file under ~/.claude/ide/ so the CLI can find the editor. The maker says it is the first Neovim integration and that it rebuilt what the official VS Code extension does. We cannot confirm either claim. No release version or date was visible to us, so we cannot tell how current it is.
That is why we call it community-maintained and put it last. What would move it up is a release date inside the last few months, and a first run on a throwaway repository would tell you more than this page can. Visual Studio is in the same position: a community extension called dliedke/ClaudeCodeExtension is on the Visual Studio Marketplace, its page shows the MIT license and 76 stars and does not say which Visual Studio versions it supports. Treat both like any third-party code that reads your files.
What does the IDE add over the terminal?
The IDE adds context sharing, diffs in a native viewer and diagnostics, and the terminal keeps everything else. In every documented integration, the editor sends your selection and the active file, and the transcript shows a line such as "Selected N lines" when it does. A Read deny rule for a file such as .env stops both the selection and the open-file notice for that file from reaching Claude, which we would set up before anything else on a shared machine.
The VS Code extension differs from the JetBrains plugin in one way that matters for setup. Anthropic says the extension bundles its own copy of the CLI for the chat panel, but installing the extension does not put claude on your shell PATH, so the integrated terminal needs the standalone install too. Our Claude Code terminal setup guide covers that install and the PATH fixes. The JetBrains plugin has no bundled copy at all.
How do you keep terminal and IDE sessions in sync?
Run the terminal session from the IDE's project root and use /ide to attach an external terminal. Anthropic says the VS Code extension and the CLI share the same conversation history, so claude --resume in the terminal opens a picker with the extension's conversations. For JetBrains, the doc says to start Claude Code from the same directory as the IDE project root so both see the same files. If you want to move work to a different agent altogether, for example from the CLI to Zed's agent, DevPilot is free with an account and writes a Markdown handoff with decisions, changed files, Git state and next steps. We have not run it, and it is a handoff file, not a live sync.
For the machine itself, Dev Setup Bootstrap costs USD 5 per its listing and generates a re-runnable setup.sh, a Makefile or justfile and a devcontainer.json from the lockfiles and manifests in a repository. Its listing says not every agent was tested. We would use it when every developer on a team has to reach the same IDE setup, and the Claude DevOps and cloud collection has more for that job. For handoffs and routines across sessions, see the Claude productivity collection.
Where to go next
Read the vendor pages again before you roll anything out, because minimum versions and plugin status change: Anthropic's JetBrains and VS Code pages, and Zed's external agents page, listed under Sources below. For the editor that most teams start with, read how to use skills in VS Code. We will recheck this page monthly and mark what changed.
Written by Samuel Rose, Founder of Agensi.