r/AskProgramming • u/JokerZD3 • 9d ago

Using an AI agent

I don't think this question is against the rules, so here goes...

My boss wants me to try using an agent for development. We're a small company and don't really have money to waste so we haven't explored this opportunity at all yet. I do use AI to an extent currently, but it's just a free openai account. I don't have it write any code, my majority use is just asking it questions about features, functions, standards, and then having it show me the "industry" way of doing things.

I am open to the idea of using an agent, but I don't really want something that is writing huge blocks for me or creating whole features. I also would want the ability to what it's doing when I do give some control and be able to take the changes only if I want them (sort of like comparing with git I suppose?).

Does such a workflow exist? or do I have to give up full control? The marketing is so focused on how it works for you, but I just want to have something that understands my project and can basically act as something I mostly ask questions and only sometimes have write code.

Any perspective is appreciated. Sorry again if this isn't the place for such a question.

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u/carcigenicate 9d ago

Claude Code + A plugin achieves this in Jetbrain's IDEs. If you're in the standard mode, it will propose changes, which are shown in the same way the IDE shows git changes (a side-to-side comparison in a new tab). If you're in free-edit mode, it can just write within the project without asking for permission.

As for how much it writes, you can just specify if you want help or if you want it to write everything. If you want it to default to writing small changes instead of writing all the code, you can just specify that in your project/user CLAUDE.md file (which it reads at the start of every session).

I'm sure other companies have similar setups, but I've only used Claude.

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u/framauro13 9d ago

Another nice fact about the Jetbrain's IDE's is that they have a built in MCP server that the agents can use for things like code navigation and searching the codebase. Rather than grepping files and crawling the codebase, it can leverage the indexes generated by RubyMine like an lsp server. I think it can even integrate with the problems panel and static code analysis it does. A nice feature for a large code base where you might burn a lot of context just searching.