[joshmarlow]

VSCode has a pretty good Gemini integration - it can pull up a chat window from the side. I like to discuss design changes and small refactorings ("I added this new rpc call in my protobuf file, can you go ahead and stub out the parts of code I need to get this working in these 5 different places?") and it usually does a pretty darn good job of looking at surrounding idioms in each place and doing what I want. But gemini can be kind of slow here.

But I would recommend just starting using Claude in the browser, talk through an idea for a project you have and ask it to build it for you. Go ahead and have a brain storming session before you actually ask it to code - it'll help make sure the model has all of the context. Don't be afraid to overload it with requirements - it's generally pretty good at putting together a coherent plan. If the project is small/fits in a single file - say a one page web app or a complicated data schema + sql queries - then it can usually do a pretty good job in one place. Then just copy+paste the code and run it out of the browser.

This workflow works well for exploring and understanding new topics and technologies.

Cursor is nice because it's an AI integrated IDE (smoother than the VSCode experience above) where you can select which models to use. IMO it seems better at tracking project context than Gemini+VSCode.

Hope this helps!