ByteDance reveals AI-powered code editor 'Trae' to take on Microsoft
What's the story
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has launched an AI-powered code editor called Trae. The new tool comes as a competitor to established American players like Cursor and Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. It has been launched just as US President Donald Trump decided to delay a law that would force ByteDance to divest from TikTok.
Market focus
Trae targets international market
Trae is an integrated development environment (IDE) tailored for the international market. The most interesting thing about it is that it allows programmers to interact with an AI assistant while coding. This assistant can generate code snippets or write project-level code on the basis of natural language prompts, making the whole experience a lot better.
Tech specs
AI capabilities and language support
The AI capabilities of Trae are powered by either OpenAI's GPT-4o or Anthropic's Claude-3.5-Sonnet. As of now, these advanced features are available for free to users. The user interface supports English and Chinese languages, which would appeal to a large number of overseas programmers from China. However, ByteDance has not revealed any plans to add more languages in the future.
Release info
Trae's availability and distribution
Trae is available on Apple's macOS at the moment, with a Microsoft Windows version in the works. The software is distributed by ByteDance's Singapore-based subsidiary, Spring (SG) Pte, which also launched the Cici chatbot in 2023. Like Cursor, Trae is a derivative of Microsoft's open-source IDE and text editor Visual Studio Code (now with GitHub Copilot).