──────────────────────────────────────── 🚫 Stop Using Chat Apps for Coding ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. These are not coding tools. You can paste code and ask questions. It feels like progress. But they have zero access to your repository. No folder structure, no shared utilities, no real project context. Everything they produce is generic. Generic code is almost always useless for real work. Use agents that run inside your project instead. ──────────────────────────────────────── CLI Agents vs IDE Agents ► CLI agents run in the terminal, directly inside the repo. ► IDE agents live inside the editor (Cursor, VS Code, etc.). Both can be strong. They just work differently and have slightly different use cases. Bonus: A new breed of applications is starting to show up: GUI apps with a chat-like interface that can still control and manage AI coding agents. The biggest example right now is the new ChatGPT that includes Codex. You can switch between simple AI chat and full AI coding agents in the same interface. ──────────────────────────────────────── The Agents Worth Knowing Right Now 🔹 1. Claude Code (CLI – Anthropic) Currently the strongest overall CLI agent. Three models, three jobs: • Opus → Most capable. Complex refactors, hard bugs, architecture decisions. Expensive. • Sonnet → Daily driver. Fast, accurate, handles most coding and documentation well. • Haiku → Fast and cheap. Small tasks only (renames, simple helpers, quick edits). Pricing uses usage windows ($20 / $100 / $200 plans). Limits reset every 5 hours and weekly. If you match the model to the task, the caps rarely become a real problem. 🔹 2. Codex (CLI – OpenAI) Built specifically for coding. Model tiers: • Sol → Highest capability. Hard problems and large changes. • Terra → Balanced. Most day-to-day work. • Luna → Fast and cheap. Simple tasks. Same window-based pricing style as Anthropic ($20 / $100 / $200). 🔹 3. Opencode (CLI – Open source) Best free starting point. It can run free open-source models and also connect to Anthropic or OpenAI if needed. No account required for the free models. Quality is average, but average at $0 is a fair trade while learning the workflow.