Every AI-Powered Development Environment I Could Find
There’s too many to keep track of 😆
I wrote this a few weeks back and there hasn't been a perfect time to release it, as I've been working on podcasts and other content, and I don't want to blow everyone up with too many emails per week. So I hope you enjoy this and let me know if there's any other editors I should add.
Zed
Zed is actually one of my favorite alternative code editors, mainly because it's not just another VSCode fork and it's written in Rust. So it actually feels a little bit snappier and unique. And I like what they've done with the design.
I like that it supports local models. They have a hosted version similar to Cursor. They also have their own proprietary autocomplete model, which is pretty far behind Cursors, unfortunately. You'll see below when I get to cursor why and how it's so much better than all the current alternatives.
If you want to support an open-source editor who's trying to make money by charging for premium model access, Zed is a good one. Unlike Cursor, which is fully proprietary, Zed's editor is open source.
It also gets high praises from users on Reddit:
The speed of the editor is really nice, but It’s still early days for Zed.
I noticed that I cannot override a local model’s ability to enable tool use. This was a huge pain, and most of the value of using a local model for agent mode, required tool use. Most of these editors all have some issues that irk me to some degree. Even after manually adding it to the settings config for my model, it was still disabled.
A small quirk which is to be expected in something so new. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Void
Void is a pretty nice VSCode fork. It's very simple, the auto-complete is basic, the agent mode is what you'd expect from Cursor, Zed, or Continue, or any of the other ones that you may have tried.
It's really what you would think VSCode would have been had it started out after AI was a thing.
It's nice that everything just works. If you have Olah or LM Studio or another local model language server running on your computer, there is no configuration. Just opening Void immediately sees that and you can choose any of those models for a chat or an auto-complete session.
It's worth noting that autocomplete is in beta, and again it's just basic autocomplete. Nothing compared to the state of the art that exists in Cursor.
Void is probably the most promising newer entry into the open source space. If they can iterate and catch up, I can see it being great. Even though it’s a little bare bones now, it just works. There were no issues.
Zed and Void are the most exciting ones, with Void being slightly more at this time, because they aren’t pushing for paid versions of anything yet, which I hope it stays that way.
Open Hands
I used this one for the first time when Devstral came out a couple weeks ago.
This one is unique because it’s really a layer ON TOP of an IDE. It includes VS Code inside of it.
It’s really meant to fire off a lot of AI tasks all at once. For each task you get your own isolated VS Code environment you can use to test and run the code before pushing it up to your repos.
It’s a really neat idea that negates the need to context switch between editors constantly as you’re trying to validate work you had AI do for you.
Cursor
You've heard me talk a lot about Cursor in the past reviews. The biggest thing is the video above. The tab autocomplete is just incredible. Not only will it jump around and immediately realize that you want to import certain things that don't exist, but it will also be really intelligent in other ways.
If you're editing something that has something similar in the file, it will suggest to just tab complete both of those sections together. It's amazing what they've been able to do from what little I understand. They have a special model that will pull in tons of context all from your codebase and really understand everything you're trying to do. It's been specifically trained on how people jump around in their editor.
Cursor's agent mode for a long time was a ways off from what Cline and Roo code were, but it's since improved a lot and to be honest it's a great value for the $20/month that it costs.
I would have to say after every AI ide and extension that I've tried over the past year, I always come back to Cursor's autocomplete. Whether I use a different editor to do agent work, I will always use Cursors tab autocomplete. And I cannot wait for the day that open source has an autocomplete that's on par with it.
I have to give Cursor a 9.5/10, and honestly, I would give it a 10/10 if they weren't completely closed source.
Windsurf
This one I do not have much experience with. It is nearly identical to cursor which I have use a lot more. Their tab autocomplete is a level up from the open source options but I still find cursor’s ux and abilities better.
Which is crazy to me that it was just acquired by Open AI for 3 BILLION.
Edit: that deal fell through actually 😬
In such a crowded market I can’t believe they paid so much for this company. They must know something I don’t or want to own as much of the AI market as possible.
VS Code + Continue
If this was a year ago, I would say Cursor and Continue are pretty similar, and it's pretty awesome what Continue is doing for the open source community. But lately, it's fallen way behind. I found bugs when I try to use it. It kind of glitches when it tries to apply changes from what an agent gives me, and I choose the apply button. Sometimes the red highlights in VSCode will stay around even after I hit accept. It's little things like that, and the unpolished nature of Continue that it's just fallen off a lot more than Cursor, whereas Cursor has really beautiful UI, really nice loading indicators, and everything just looks like perfection.
It's worth noting that Mistral just made a fork of Continue for their enterprise offering called Mistral Code (insert link), but nobody's able to try it without enterprise access, so I can't comment on it.
Claude Code
I've been using Claude code non-stop since I paid for the Max Plan two weeks ago.
The agentic loop that Claude is able to do is superior to every other agent mode currently.
Whenever it encounters a mistake or an error, it seems to always find a way around it and continue working through what it needs to.
This isn't really an IDE, but I felt like I had to add it just because it's so similar to everything else, and it really can become its own IDE.
Sounds weird to say when it's just a command line application. But it's able to do so much with such a simple interface.
I'm able to make reproducible prompts, which handles so many complex tasks I don't even need to jump around in my editor anymore.
You can see more of my thoughts about how I’m using it in my post last week about shifting your mindset to use AI.
VS Code + Cline
I wasn't going to add an entry for this one, but I felt like I had to after writing everything else.
Visual Studio Code by itself and now I guess with Copilot which is open source, so you can kind of consider those one in the same. In addition to that, Cline is pretty powerful on its own.
If you're stuck on VSCode because you've been using it for a very long time, just install Cline. The agent mode is pretty amazing if you're trying to stick to what you know.
I love that you can use any model provider. Local models work as well, especially with Devstral, and you can just get a lot out of it without paying anyone anything.
Kilo Code
https://kilocode.ai/?rdt_cid=5199116422869239961&utm_campaign=v1_en_aicoding&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=reddit
This one keeps appearing on advertisements constantly, although I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet.
AIDE
This one seems to be the first one to lose the war of the Aiditors (see what I did there 😆)
It’s been officially sunset as of a few months ago I only included it because I had used it once, went to go see what’s new, and saw the repository is archived.
That’s all for now
I hope to see Void and continue keep striving forward.
If Microsoft doesn’t level up the newly open sourced GitHub copilot extension in VS Code, I can see both of those getting bigger…. If they can catch up with Cursor
There’s a lot of other extensions like Cline, Roo Code, but I left those out as they are more of a specific agent only tool, not an entire editor integration.
Hope you found this useful, and if there’s another one you’re using, let me know in the comments and maybe I can update this. I’m trying all of these that I can, but I’m realizing the only one standing out drastically is cursor, and a little bit with Zed as its a uniquely different editor platform than the rest.
I am using my IDE less than ever before, with most of my time spent inside Claude code.