Last weeks I have also been testing AI coding agents, in my case Claude Code because it seems like it is the state of the art (also tried Gemini Cli and Amp).
Some conclusions about this:
- The agentic part really makes it better than Copilot & others. You have to see it iterating and fixing errors using feedback from tests, lint, LSP... it gives the ilusion of a human working.
- It's like a savant human, with an encyclopedic knowledge and hability to spit code faster than me. But like a human it benefits from having, tests, a good architecture (no 20k line code file, pls).
- Before it changes code you have to make it create a plan of what he is going to do. In Claude Code this is simple, is a mode you switch to with Shift-tab. In this mode instead of generating code it just spits a plan in Markdown, you read it suggest changes and when it look ok you tell it to start implementing it.
- You have to try it seriously to see where it can benefit your workflow. Give it 5 minutes (https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes).
As an agent it shines on things where it can get a nice feedback and iterate to a solution. One dumb example I found cool was when trying to update a Flutter app that I hadn't touched in a year.
And if you use Flutter you know what did happen, Flutter had to upgrade but before it required updating Android SDK, then Android Gradle Plugin, and another thing, and some other thing to infinite... It's a thing I hate because I have done too many times.
So I tried by hand and after 40 mins of suffering I thought about opening Gemini Cli and tell it to update the project. Then it began executing one command and then reading the error and execute another one to fix the error, then another error that pointed to a page in the Android docs, so it opened that page, read it and fixed that problem, then the next and another one...
So in 2 minutes I had my Flutter project updated and working. I don't know if this is human level intelligence and I don't care, for me it's a sharp tool that can do things like this 10x faster than me.
You can have you AGI hype, I'm happy for the future when I will have a tool like this to help me work.