AI coding tools are starting to look similar on the surface: they all offer chat, agents, code edits, terminal awareness, and some form of autocomplete. But the real differences are in the workflow. The question is less “which one has AI?” and more “where does the AI live in your development process?”

IDE

For me, VS Code is still the baseline . It is flexible, extensible, familiar, and easy to compose with different tools. I can use GitHub Copilot for autocomplete, Claude inside the editor for planning and questions, and Claude Code CLI for deeper agentic work. That modularity is a feature, not a weakness.

Cursor feels like a more opinionated AI-native version of the VS Code experience. It keeps the editor familiar but adds a stronger AI layer around it.…