Comment by thyb23

Spent a lot of time experimenting with different AI coding tools (Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Codex CLI, Antigravity...). Boris's tips cover 90% of what I'd say.

The most important is to use Claude Code with Claude Max plan to have almost unlimited access to Opus 4.5 :) the agent and DX is top notch. It one shot most of my tasks with correct code quality. If you prefer Cursor like DX, you can use Zed with the free Claude Code integration in its UI. Before, I was multiplying $20 plans but it was really annoying to switch between products to get worse quality than Opus. Best investment I made this year.

Then as Boris told: give the model a way to verify its work, just telling it explicitly 'to test, run X command / check the db in container Y / make curl request with Z access token to test your endpoint'. Game changer.

Don't overload context. When switching tasks, clear and start fresh. Mixing old task context with new one creates confusion and worse output.

One observation on Gemini 3 vs Claude 4.5 Opus: Gemini is great for one-shot on fresh projects and UIs, but struggles more on large codebases and can get easily confused (might be the Windsurf agent though).

Just experiment a lot. Like coding itself, you build intuition over time on what works and what doesn't.