Tools
Apps, editor extensions, command line tools and MCP servers, written up by people who actually run them. What it does well, what it does badly, and what you would use instead.
Claude Code
The Anthropic terminal agent for coding. It reads a CLAUDE.md file at the start of every session, so project rules do not have to be repeated in each…
Tested on Claude Sonnet · Jun 2026
Codex CLI
The OpenAI terminal coding agent. It reads a repository, plans a change and runs commands in a sandbox, and by default asks your approval before…
Tested on GPT-5 · Jun 2026
Cody
A coding assistant built on Sourcegraph code search. Its context comes from an index of your whole repository and not only the open file.
Tested on Claude Sonnet · Jun 2026
Continue
An open-source editor extension for VS Code and JetBrains. You plug in any model, hosted or local, and stay free of one vendor.
Tested on Claude Sonnet · Jun 2026
LM Studio
A desktop app for downloading, running and comparing local models without a terminal. Best tool for deciding which quantisation is good enough before…
Tested on Llama 3.2 8B · May 2026
Ollama
The easiest way to get a local model answering on your own machine. One command installs it, one pulls a model, and an API appears on localhost that…
Tested on Llama 3.3 70B · May 2026