Mar 12 (edited) • AI Agents Intro
AI Coding Agents: Part 3 — IDE Tools
In Part 2 I covered CLI tools. They work well. But when it comes to reviewing code quality, IDE agents are generally the better fit.
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► CLI agents give you output on a screen. A wall of text.
► IDE agents show changes line by line, directly inside your actual files.
In agentic IDEs, you can accept or reject each change individually. One chunk at a time.
When something goes wrong, you see exactly what changed and where. You can ask the AI to explain the change while looking at the real code. This makes it much easier to stay in control and actually understand what the agent is doing.
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🔹 How Agentic IDEs Work
You use them like any other IDE, but they also have a special chat window where you can give the AI tasks.
There are quite a few agentic IDEs available. Most of them are forks of VS Code. Some of the common ones:
• Cursor
• Kiro
• Windsurf
• VS Code with Copilot
Right now, Cursor is the strongest option. It has two exclusive models (Composer 2.5 and Cursor Grok 4.5) that deliver strong coding performance at a fraction of the cost of larger models like Opus or the top GPT models.
Cursor also has a smooth interface, relatively few bugs (looking at you, Copilot), and many small quality-of-life features that add up and make daily work noticeably easier.
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⚡ Why Third-Party Coding Agents Are Better
Most people default to Claude Code or ChatGPT with Codex. That comes with a big downside: these are proprietary tools that only give you access to a limited set of models.
• Claude Code → Anthropic models only
• ChatGPT with Codex → OpenAI models only
(Note: There are plugins that can bypass this, but they usually require extra setup and ongoing management.)
When you use a third-party AI coding agent like Cursor, you get access to models from both Anthropic and OpenAI in one place, plus open-source models and Cursor’s own exclusive models.
This lets you control cost and quality without switching tools or managing multiple subscriptions. Pricing is also more transparent, you generally know what you’re paying for.
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AI Coding Agents: Part 3 — IDE Tools
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