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noah

noah is a fast, native code editor with a built-in AI pair-programmer called shepherd. It is a fork of Zed, rebranded and extended by #houseofasher / asherin.com.

• Free to use. No paywall, no sign-up.
• Bring your own Venice AI API key — your key stays on your machine.
• shepherd reads your project's aesthetics, architecture, and code conventions, then matches your patterns.
• Custom editor wallpaper: the UI palette adapts to the image you choose.
• A real browser inside noah: shepherd can open pages, read them, click and fill forms, and you watch it live in the browser room (ctrl-alt-6) and can take over at any time.
• Every language: pick yours in Settings > General > Language; noah's interface and shepherd switch to it.
• Proof over claims: shepherd hands in evidence with each change (the commands that really ran, each claim tied to them, what it didn't verify), and a model from another family reviews it.
• Guard rails: prompt injection in web pages is withheld, secrets are redacted, irreversible commands always ask, new dependencies are checked against their registries, and every change is recorded in a tamper-evident provenance log.
• Mission control (ctrl-alt-7): every conversation, the decisions waiting on you, evidence, spend against your budget, and how shepherd's past work held up.
• Voice: speak to shepherd and hear its replies, through your own provider's API key.
• Preview: "preview this file in the browser" (in the settings menu on the left rail) shows an HTML, SVG, PDF or image file in the browser room and reloads it on every save; type localhost:3000 there to see your dev server.
• Keys stay yours: API keys live in your system keychain, never in settings or your project, and committing from noah warns you before a key or password in your changes reaches GitHub.
• No Git on Windows? Cloning a repository downloads the official portable Git for Windows (checksum-verified) the first time it's needed.
• asherin.chat (rail): think with shepherd outside any project. Chat threads can talk, search the web and read, but can't edit files or run commands.
• asherin.pages (rail): describe a PDF, a digital book or a slideshow and shepherd makes it, previews it live and exports it.
• Chat history: the sidebar groups chats by project; pin chats and projects, drag to reorder.
• Device room: security checks (antivirus, firewall, encryption, updates, remote access, open ports), health, what starts with the computer, a duplicate-file finder that keeps the newest copy, and an ad blocker for every app through the hosts file.
• Web search with sources, and a reasoning level (low, medium, high) for models that think.
• Bring a key for nearly 50 providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, xAI, DeepSeek, Groq, Together, Fireworks, Perplexity, Cerebras, Qwen, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, Doubao, Hunyuan and more, or run models locally.
• Pin any app or page you build to the rail and switch back to it in one click.
• Updates are signed with noah's release key and checked before they install.

"This file might be a security risk"

When you download or open noah, your browser or Windows may warn you that the file is unrecognised, from an unknown publisher, or "might harm your computer". The file is not harmful. The warning appears because noah is not code-signed, and code-signing is something you pay for. Here is who is saying it, from the surface down to the root:

1. Your browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox). It shows "this file isn't commonly downloaded" or "may be dangerous". It is not scanning the file for anything; it is asking a reputation service (Google Safe Browsing, or Microsoft SmartScreen inside Edge) whether it has seen this exact file, from this publisher, downloaded many times before. A new release of a small program has no history, so the answer is no.
2. Windows SmartScreen, when you run the installer: "Windows protected your PC. Unknown publisher." Windows looks for a digital signature on the .exe. Ours has none, so it cannot name a publisher, and it treats a program it cannot name as suspect. Click "More info", then "Run anyway".
3. The signature itself. A signature needs a code-signing certificate, which only a certificate authority can issue: DigiCert, Sectigo, GlobalSign, SSL.com, Certum and a few others. A standard one costs a few hundred dollars a year, and SmartScreen still warns until it has built up reputation. An "extended validation" one skips the warning immediately, costs more, is delivered on a hardware key, and requires a registered company to be checked by the authority first.
4. The root: Microsoft's Trusted Root Program. Windows trusts a certificate only if it chains to an authority Microsoft has admitted to this program. Those authorities are the businesses in step 3. The same shape exists on macOS, where Apple charges a developer fee and notarises each build itself.

So the chain is: a browser and an operating system that decide trust by signature and download count; certificate authorities that sell the signature; and Microsoft and Apple, who decide which authorities count. Nowhere in that chain does anyone look at what the program does. Signed malware exists, and unsigned honest software gets warned about every day. The warning tells you that nobody has paid to vouch for the file. That is all it tells you.

If you would rather check for yourself than click through a warning, you can:

• Compare the file's SHA-256 with the one printed on the download page. If they match, the file is the one we published.
• Read the source, here, and build it yourself (below). That is the only real proof, and it is the reason noah is open.

We intend to sign releases once the certificate is paid for. Until then the warning will show, and this section is here so you know why.

Linux has no such gate. The .deb and the .tar.xz install without a warning, though a browser may still flag the download by the same reputation logic as step 1.

Community: Discord · asherin.com

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Building noah

noah is a native desktop application built in Rust on the GPUI framework. It is not a web app and is not deployed to a web host — it ships as a downloadable binary for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Follow the upstream Zed development docs for your platform (the toolchain is identical):

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows

Quick start once the toolchain is set up:

# Run the editor (debug)
cargo run -p zed

# Release build
cargo build --release -p zed

The Rust crate is still named zed internally (renaming 247 crates would gain nothing and break every internal path); the product you see — window title, About dialog, app bundle — is noah.

Credit

noah stands on the shoulders of Zed by Zed Industries, licensed under GPL-3.0 / Apache-2.0. See LICENSE-GPL and LICENSE-APACHE. This fork retains those licenses.

shepherd's browser is agent-browser by Vercel Labs, Apache-2.0. noah's installers include its binary unchanged, with its license alongside (script/fetch-agent-browser pins and verifies the release).