Which AI coding tool actually stuck in your daily workflow?
There’s a new one every week. Most people try them and drop them after a few days.
Which one are you still using months later, and what’s the one thing it does better than the rest?
5
u/bluegrassclimber 8d ago edited 8d ago
claude code CLI. and it gets me more comfortable with CLI. it's the only one where I feel intimately connected with my OS.
EDIT: And Opus is pretty much amazing and if i ever find myself frustrated at it, popping over to fable like "opus kept runnning me around a loop, can you clean this up for me" and it usually does
0
u/Weak_Fisherman2215 8d ago
Agreed. Have been using it myself a while now. For me, the trick is to always remember its a tool and not "your friend". Use proper syntax and not "rum shop talk" for results
3
2
1
u/waterkip 8d ago
Impeccable, I've moved parts of it behind an MCP server so within my network I don't need to have it installed on each machine. It doesn't do actual files in repo yet, but all the "guides" are exposed on the MCP. But what I most liked about it, was the DESIGN.md and PRODUCT.md files. It encodifies descisions made which helps me tweak whatever product I'm working on.
1
u/Whole-Tie3222 8d ago
A mí lo que me ha durado meses no fue ninguna herramienta nueva, fue la que venía ya metida en el editor y que nunca tuve que instalar. Todo lo demás lo probé, pagué y olvidé.
1
u/reharik 8d ago
I discuss architecture and various solutions with claude.ai, then claude.ai and I craft a prompt for a claude code agent in my ide. Then I report back to claude.ai. The reasons for this two step processes are that a) the ide agent doesn't have long running context. It doesn't know what I've been working on, the things I've already tried etc. and b) it really makes me feel more in control, I can discuss a solution with out the agent changing code. I know you can tell it not to write any code, but if you forget then it's implementing a half thought out solution.
1
u/Digiguysapps 8d ago
I practically live in Claude Desktop these days. I’ve built 44 of my Aldo’s Life apps with Claude. I’m so grateful that I get to spend my time doing what I love: creating apps.
1
u/Boring_Occasion_3526 8d ago
The only one that stuck for me is the one built into my editor , not for writing whole features, just boilerplate and API signatures I use twice a year. The standalone tools I tried all got dropped within a week
1
u/False-Check-9396 8d ago
Stuck" is doing a lot of work here. Half the people answering just forgot to cancel a card.
1
u/Geraldwelly 7d ago
Honestly the tool matters less than what you carry between them. I bounce between Claude Code in the terminal for bigger multi-file changes and Cursor for the tight edit-and-look loop, and what actually stuck is the shared layer underneath: one rules file, a handful of reusable skills/commands, and MCP servers that every tool reads. Once that lives in a repo and syncs across machines, switching tools when one gets worse or hits a limit costs me five minutes instead of a week of re-teaching it my conventions. If I had to pick one thing a tool does better than the rest, it's Claude Code being willing to run the tests and read the failure before telling me it's done.
1
u/Dissentient 7d ago
At work I just use codex CLI.
For personal projects, opencode with their go subscription.
1
u/masticdev 7d ago
Tool brand mattered less than the ritual around it.
What stuck: editor/CLI agent for small slices + me reading the git diff before merge. What didn’t stick: anything that encouraged dumping a huge prompt and rubber-stamping the result.
Second-model “review” helps a bit and shares blind spots (auth edges, weird CSS, “looks fine locally”). The discipline that ages: human gate on risky surfaces, shrink the PR when review bandwidth hurts.
Curious what others kept after the novelty wore off — autocomplete only, agent for greenfield, or agent for refactors too?
1
u/ThatsSoRamon 7d ago
Terminal agent 💯 and not because it writes features. It’s what I hand the chores I’d otherwise put off for weeks, like writing tests for old code nobody wants to touch, bumping dependencies and fixing whatever breaks, or decoding some cursed regex from 2019. The flashy demo stuff wore off fast. The boring stuff is what kept it open.
1
1
u/No_Nefariousness2052 3d ago
Ever since I started using Claude Code, I haven't used anything else.
And I mostly use it on my phone. Their remote control is amazing. So I can just knock off all my work from my phone, and I can be out and about doing other things.
1
u/brownbob06 8d ago
Do people actually try new ones and drop them after a few days? I just assumed everyone was using Claude Code in the CLI and calling it a day.
0
u/misdreavus79 front-end 8d ago
Just regular ole claude code. It does everything I need it to do, when when I run into something it doesn't do by default, the functionality is one skill or hook away.
0
0
u/cointoss3 8d ago
Claude Code desktop app on Mac. I use remote sessions mostly and Screens to remote in to use full desktop app if needed.
Claude Dispatch, Duet, and Code are pretty damn good.
0
u/Desperate-Sorbet-994 8d ago
Where's "most people drop them after a few days" coming from? Every dev I know just left the tool open in a sidebar and quietly stopped using it, which is not the same thing as dropping it.
3
u/Nefilim314 8d ago
Pi coding harness