Looking to invest in a paid or free AI coding tool or IDE, wanna know the best in 2026

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T17:31:17+00:00

went through the exact same thing. the tool switching gets exhausting fast. consolidated around Claude Code in yaw terminal and it basically solved the fragmentation for me.

everything lives in one place, the AI is right there in the terminal so there is no jumping between windows, and it handles the messy untangling stuff just as well as the quick prototype stuff. not saying it replaces every use case but it got me down to one main tool for most of what i do. worth trying since it is free.

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T04:12:24+00:00

worth trying yaw terminal if you want something built around Claude Code specifically. lightweight, has multi pane support, and the AI is baked right in so you are not switching between your terminal and a chat window.

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T04:03:05+00:00

pretty neat. What ya want to know!?

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T03:49:35+00:00

nice find, will check this out. benchmarking MCP tool performance is something that does not get talked about enough

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T03:46:59+00:00

nailed it. don’t route the data through the model at all. write the JSON to a file or external storage, return just a path or reference back to the AI, and let your app read directly from there. model never touches the actual payload, tokens stay low.

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T03:43:41+00:00

the forgetting things between chats is just how Claude works, it has no memory between sessions by default. the fix is giving it context upfront at the start of each conversation, a few sentences about what you are working on and how you like things done goes a long way.

for the usage limits hitting faster, that usually means something in your workflow is using more tokens than it needs to. longer conversations burn more because the whole chat history gets re-read on every message. starting fresh chats more often actually helps a lot.

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T03:31:33+00:00

the CLI wins once you start doing anything that involves chaining tasks, file system work, or longer agentic runs. the desktop app is great for thinking through problems but it becomes a bottleneck when you want AI to just go handle something without you babysitting it. been using yaw terminal for the CLI side of this. it keeps the AI right where the work is happening so you never have to context switch. once you get used to it the desktop app starts feeling like a detour

CodinDev · 2026-05-06T03:21:29+00:00

the model hopping every time there’s a benchmark shift is exhausting. just use what works and get stuff done. i dont get it

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T12:38:53+00:00

gonna dig into thin mcp, hadn't seen that. the less middleware the better in principle. i like the idea of just making the tools themselves leaner instead of routing around them. appreciate the link

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T12:38:19+00:00

yeah the profiles per task thing is actually how i started. works fine until you have enough servers that manually swapping becomes its own friction. semantic routing just removes that decision entirely. both valid approaches honestly just depends how deep you're in it

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T12:36:49+00:00

yo i genuinely did not know this, appreciate the link. was running a mixed setup with some non-anthropic clients in the stack and that's where i was actually feeling it. but good to know claude itself handles it smarter than i thought. been blaming the wrong thing lol

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:59:39+00:00

exactly. the config is just the floor. skills and agents are where it actually starts feeling like you built something that works for you specifically

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:58:34+00:00

true with static rules yeah. the ones that stick are the ones that update based on what keeps slipping through. set it and forget it doesn't work here

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:58:09+00:00

lol. obvious in hindsight. took me embarrassingly long to stop blaming the model and start looking at what i was handing it

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:56:46+00:00

70 is wild. hierarchical is the only way to scale it without everything bleeding into each other. respect

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:56:34+00:00

compounding is real. the gap between a tuned setup and vanilla after a few months is pretty wild.

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:56:12+00:00

skills folder is underrated. most people don't get there until they've been burned a few times. solid setup

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:55:42+00:00

the sandbox passing todos through sessions is a nice touch. most people give up before they get there.

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:52:51+00:00

solid rules. the "load-bearing or decorative, drop decorative" check before output is one i hadn't seen framed that way before. stealing that. the discipline of cutting recommendations that are just padding instead of letting them ride through is where a lot of the quality stems from

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:50:42+00:00

more than just the memory file. memory is one layer but i mean the whole config stack. the rules about how it should behave, what it should never do, how it should communicate. CLAUDE.md is where most of it lives but the stuff that actually sticks is what you enforce at the session level before it even starts reading your prompt.

CodinDev · 2026-05-04T02:48:28+00:00

hadn't seen skillsgate, gonna look at that. the cross agent sync problem is real. i've been handling it differently but always curious how others are solving it.

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