AI Coding Tools

The tools change monthly; the categories and the workflow lessons persist. The AISL material covers both: a systematic comparison of tool categories, and a set of experiments in working — and shipping — with the tools.

The categories

AI Coding Tools Compared builds the same React Snake app with each category, keeping the app small on purpose so the tool is the variable:

• Chat applications are easy to try; you move code by hand between browser and editor.
• Coding assistants and IDEs read files, propose edits, and run commands inside the project.
• Project bootstrappers give you a hosted app from a prompt in minutes; the work is the path back into source control.
• Agents are chat with tools — the mechanism behind most of the other categories.

Full-Stack Vibe Coding is the serious version of the bootstrapper path: a Lovable frontend, an OpenAPI spec written first, a FastAPI backend generated by Codex, SQLite then Postgres, Docker Compose, AWS, and CI/CD — AI-fast, but with the human keeping architectural control.

Driving coding agents

The agents that write code are built on the Building Coding Agents page. Using them well gets its own experiments:

• Experiments with Claude Code — custom slash commands as Markdown files, a kid/parent pair that invents and implements projects in a loop, stop hooks, and a Python continue loop that keeps Claude coding.
• Setting Up a Remote Environment for Agentic Workloads — persistent agent sessions on a remote box, reachable from any device. Agentic Development Environments is the dedicated page for that box.
• Shipping Features From My Phone — a merged PR from a tram stop: voice-dictated issue, Copilot implementation, phone review, CI/CD deploy. The lesson is that a fully automated feedback loop is what makes agent-driven shipping location-independent.
• How I Rebuilt My Personal Website in 10 Minutes With AI — the five-minute version: specific prompts with real content and visual references, then framework translation by a coding agent.

Where to go next

• Build your own agent: Building Coding Agents
• Ship what they build: Agent Deployment