How this actually works.
Long, specific writing about AI coding agents - what they do, what they cost, where they fail, and how to get real work out of them. Written by the people building one, which means we say where ours is worse too.
Claude Code alternatives: what changes when you switch
Six terminal coding agents, what each is genuinely better at, and the honest case for staying where you are.
The best vibe coding tools, and what decides success
Vibe coding is a different division of labour, not a lower standard - and it collapses at a predictable point.
Cursor alternatives: the editor is not the hard part
Reviews compare autocomplete. What decides whether you keep an AI editor is what it does when a task spans eleven files.
GitHub Copilot alternatives: what are you replacing?
Copilot is three products with one name. Which one you are unhappy with decides which alternative is even relevant.
The best AI coding agent fits your failure mode
Rankings are close to useless because the tools are close. What separates them is how they break. Plus a 20-minute test.
Local AI coding agent: when it is right, and what it costs
Two different things get called local, and conflating them is why people end up disappointed.
Open source AI coding agent: what you take on
Open source solves the trust problem and hands you an operations problem. The real gains, and who should not choose it.
Why your AI agent gets stuck, and how to unstick it
Five ways an agent run goes wrong, what each looks like from the outside, and the move that actually recovers it.
AI coding agent pricing: where the money actually goes
The price on the pricing page is not the price. What drives an agent bill, and four things that change it more than switching vendor.
What an AI coding agent is, and how it differs
Not a chatbot that writes code - a loop that reads your project, acts on it and checks its own work.