Windsurf

Windsurf is an AI-native code editor developed by Codeium (now part of OpenAI following its acquisition in 2025) that blends traditional code completion with agentic coding capabilities. The editor is designed around the concept of "Flows" - an AI paradigm that combines the responsiveness of a copilot with the autonomy of an agent, allowing the tool to both suggest inline completions and execute multi-step tasks across files.

The editor features Cascade, its agentic chat system that can read, write, and refactor code across multiple files while maintaining awareness of your full project context. Windsurf tracks your recent actions and terminal output to proactively suggest relevant next steps, and it can run terminal commands, install dependencies, and debug errors as part of a single workflow. Like Cursor, it is built on a VS Code foundation, making the transition familiar for most developers.

Windsurf gained traction by offering a generous free tier and positioning itself as a more accessible alternative to Cursor. OpenAI's acquisition of Codeium brought Windsurf into the OpenAI ecosystem, raising questions about its independence and future direction. The acquisition reflected the broader trend of foundation model companies absorbing developer tools, similar to how Claude Code and Codex expanded the coding capabilities of Anthropic and OpenAI respectively.