AI Coding Tools

A few people have asked about what tools I'm using for AI coding so I figured I'd snapshot what I'm using right now. Given how fast AI is changing it will probably be different six months from now. I haven't tested different tools extensively so don't take this as expert advice, just one data point.

For tab completion I've been using Amp Tab which is the tab completion part of Amp which is Sourcegraph's second generation AI coding tool (after Cody). Amp itself is a little too aggressive for my style of programming. I prefer to review changes closely before applying them. Currently Amp Tab is experimental and is still free. My understanding is that it's similar to Cursor, which I haven't tried because I prefer to use standard VSCodium. Even Amp Tab can be a little aggressive for me sometimes. I have to be careful about hitting tab to indent a line since it's liable to go and make changes to my code.

For investigating, reviewing, or writing code I've been using Cline as a VSCode extension. Cline is open source and lets you pick your AI model and provider. I've been using OpenRouter so I can try out different models. You can also use Cline as the provider which I might have done if I'd realized it before I signed up with OpenRouter.

Cline has a "planning" mode which is basically read-only, and an "act" mode where it makes code changes. Even in act mode I require approval for code changes.

As far as models, I started out with Claude 3.5 and progressed to 3.7 and now 4. I've also tried a few others like GPT-5 and grok-code-fast-1. There isn't a huge difference, they can all do well or mess up badly but I tend to go back to Claude 4 even though it's one of the more expensive ones. The last few months I've been spending about $50 per month on model usage. It's worth it for me, as much for the learning experience as for the actual code produced. If you didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) spend money on it, there are usually free or cheap options. 

For general research I've been using Gemini 2.5 Pro, mostly because it's included with our company Gmail/Google accounts. It works well to research algorithms or data structures.

The big question these days is whether programmers are actually more productive using AI. There have been studies that show that although programmers feel they're more productive, they're actually not. It sounds a bit like multi-tasking. I wouldn't say it's made a huge difference to my productivity. Some types of tasks go quicker, but for others AI can become a big time waster. I would say the quality of my code might be slightly higher from having more tests and more reviews.