Author here: Yes, that's what I meant. I agree it's not the most appropriate adjetive to describe the editor. But one of my intentions is to keep the UI as clean as possible (I'm not a fan of cluttered editors with several panels on screen all the time).
Considering IntelliJ has different setups, you'd have to compare the zen or distraction mode of IntelliJ with the minimalist setup here, which seems to be more cluttered than what JetBrains is offering.
Author here: You can hide everything in the editor (minimap, line number info, side panel, etc). I guess could add a Zen mode that hides everything at once for simplicity. The editor will remember your view settings, so it's very doable to have a zen mode by default.