What Cafe replaces
Close a dozen apps.
The apps people keep open next to their editor, and the part of Cafe that takes over. Cafe covers the everyday work of each one; it doesn't claim to match every feature.
Code
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| VS Code, Cursor | The code editor | Language servers installed for you, a DAP debugger, Vim mode, multi-cursor editing and project search, for most day-to-day coding. | In Cafe today |
| Visual Studio's New Project dialog, Yeoman, create-* CLIs | Templates and the New Project wizard | 26 built-in templates that run the official generators for you, with every file and command shown before anything runs. | In Cafe today |
| GitHub Desktop, GitKraken | Source Control | Staging, word-level diffs, inline blame, branches and conflict helpers, plus commit messages from Claude. | In Cafe today |
| iTerm2, Windows Terminal | Terminal and tasks | A terminal with shell integration for bash, zsh and fish, and tasks found in Cargo, npm, Make, just, Go and pytest projects. | In Cafe today |
| VS Code Live Share | Collaboration | Edit together in real time over a link or an SSH tunnel, with cursors, follow mode and read-only guests. No central server. | In Cafe today |
AI
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code in a separate terminal, chat apps for coding questions | The Claude panel, Ask Claude anywhere, background agents | Chat beside your code with checkpoints, send any view to Claude with Ctrl+Alt+L, and run agents in their own git worktrees. Claude Code does the work underneath, on your subscription. | In Cafe today |
| Wiring up MCP servers for your tools | Cafe's MCP tools | Over 100 built-in tools let Claude Code use git, the terminal, tasks, the debugger, read-only queries, logs, the API client and your notes. | In Cafe today |
| LM Studio, Ollama's apps | Local models and Cafe Agent | Download and run models on a managed llama.cpp, browse Hugging Face, and use Cafe's own agent without Claude. | Coming |
APIs and data
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Postman, Insomnia, Bruno | API client | REST, WebSocket, SSE and gRPC, scripts and tests, a mock server, Postman, OpenAPI and Bruno import, and a CLI, all in plain .req files. | In Cafe today |
| TablePlus, DBeaver, pgAdmin | Databases | For PostgreSQL: the schema, queries, Explain plans and SSH tunnels. Other databases aren't supported yet. | In Cafe today |
| Docker Desktop's dashboard | Containers | Containers grouped by Compose project, with live stats, logs and actions. Cafe works with the Docker engine you already run. | In Cafe today |
| lnav and other log viewers | Logs | Log files of any size, followed live, with columns for JSON and logfmt, filters and plain-English summaries. | In Cafe today |
| FileZilla, Cyberduck | SFTP | Browse, open and edit files on a server over plain SSH. | In Cafe today |
| VS Code Remote - SSH | Remote hosts | Language servers on the remote machine with nothing to install there, a host dashboard and port forwards. | In Cafe today |
| Rambox, Ferdium | Services | Keep web apps such as chat and mail in Cafe's side bar. | In Cafe today |
Notes
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian | Notes | Your vault as it is: live preview, links and backlinks, the graph, Canvas, Bases, daily notes and templates. Obsidian's community plugins don't run in Cafe. | In Cafe today |
| Voice memo apps | Audio notes | Record straight into your vault and play it back inline. No transcription yet. | In Cafe today |
Office
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word, Google Docs | Documents | Open and edit .docx and .odt with tracked changes, comments, tables and charts, for most everyday documents. | In Cafe today |
| Excel, Google Sheets | Sheets | Formulas, PivotTables, charts, conditional formatting and filters in .xlsx, .ods and .csv files. | In Cafe today |
| Adobe Acrobat | PDF tools | View, annotate, edit text, fill and sign forms, redact, protect, organise pages, OCR and compare. | In Cafe today |
Design
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photoshop, Photopea, Pixelmator | Image editor | Layers and adjustment layers, filters, painting, selections, type and vectors. Opens PSD files. | In Cafe today |
Teams (Cafe Cloud)
| Instead of | In Cafe | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slack with Trello or Linear | Sorted | Team projects and chat in one place, where every item is a conversation, docked beside your code. | Coming |
| webhook.site, ngrok's request inspector, smee.io | Hooker | Capture webhooks, forward them to localhost, replay them, and open any one as a request in the API client. | Coming |
| Asking in chat who knows a repo, and waiting | BirdyTalks | Your agent asks a teammate's agent, which answers from the repos they registered. | Coming |
One install. One window.
Everything you keep open beside your editor, in the editor.
Coming soon Linux first, then macOS and Windows.
Product names are trademarks of their owners.