You can easily disable automatic downloading of extensions.

https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#auto-install-extensions

That option is either not explained well, or not what OP was really asking for. It doesn't specify what's the default behaviour for extensions that are neither explicitly enabled, nor disabled. It also doesn't say how to disable everything apart from some set of extensions.

What do you mean by that? The extensions? Do you want them to maintain that themselves?

Either you have a community that happily maintains extensions or you have an "official" extension manager that rolls out an update every next year

Extensions to me mean something that I explicitly choose to install (regardless of whether they automatically update). As far as I can tell, Zed goes about downloading code (“extensions”?) invisibly with no user input. See, for example, https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12589

> or you have an "official" extension manager that rolls out an update every next year

As a debian user, sign me up!

They clearly just want the option to say yes/no to the downloads, hence the use of the word "nonconsensual".

Seems like a reasonable ask.

If you open a .cpp file it will silently download clangd in the background. Same is true for other language servers AFAIK.