Warp is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Warp and marketed as an agentic development environment (ADE). Unlike a traditional integrated development environment, where agentic capabilities may be added through extensions, Warp says that an ADE is designed around AI agents as a core component, integrating the agent harness, source-code editor, terminal, task orchestration, and review tools into a unified environment. Warp originated as a terminal emulator before evolving into an agent-centered software development environment in which agents can inspect and modify source code, execute commands, run tests, and complete development tasks from natural language instructions. It supports multiple agents working concurrently and provides developers with controls for reviewing, steering, and restricting their actions.
The Warp desktop client is primarily written in Rust. It was released as open-source software in April 2026 under the GNU AGPL, while its user-interface framework is available under the MIT License. OpenAI served as the flagship sponsor of Warp's open-source repository, with its GPT models used in Warp's agent-driven development workflow.
History
Warp entered public beta for macOS in April 2022 as a modern terminal emulator developed by a startup founded by former Google engineer Zach Lloyd. The terminal incorporated features commonly associated with graphical code editors, including command completion, menus, cursor positioning, and searchable command history.
In March 2023, Warp introduced Warp AI, which incorporated a large language model-based assistant into the terminal to generate commands and help users diagnose errors. In June, the company introduced Warp Drive, a collaborative repository for sharing commands and development workflows, and raised a $50 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital. Warp was released for Linux in February 2024 and for Windows in February 2025.
In June 2025, Warp released Warp 2.0 and repositioned the software from a terminal emulator to an agentic development environment. Warp 2.0 introduced interfaces for running and monitoring multiple AI agents, editing agent-generated code, controlling agent permissions, and combining prompts with traditional terminal commands. TechCrunch described Warp as a middle ground between conventional integrated development environments and command-line coding agents.
Warp introduced Warp Code in September 2025, adding tools for reviewing code differences and interacting with an agent while it was performing a task. In October 2025, Time included the Warp Agentic Development Environment in its Best Inventions of 2025.
In February 2026, Warp introduced Oz, a cloud platform for coordinating AI coding agents and allowing development tasks to continue outside the local desktop environment. In April, Warp released the source code for its desktop ADE. The client is licensed primarily under the GNU AGPL, while its WarpUI framework uses the MIT License. Warp's server infrastructure, Warp Drive backend, and Oz orchestration system remained proprietary.
