I Stopped Opening VS Code

Agentic mode didn't replace the editor. It just made me forget to use it.

I have been using Claude as well as OpenAI models for coding and high-level and low-level design for a couple of years now. My go-to mechanism to do software engineering work in the past was Visual Studio Code (VS Code), which comes with Copilot and provides the ability to select various models. I mostly used chat to begin with — passed my prompt, LLM returned the output, I took it from there. Many features are available in VS Code to improve the ease of use. For example, automatic selection of the currently opened file in the editor or the ability to feed files from multiple repos/folders to the LLM so they can output what has to be done.

A few things changed how I worked with these LLMs — and made it feel almost magical. First, I realized while working on the system design tasks using these models starting early or mid-2025 or even before that the Claude Sonnet outcome was more logical, detailed, and to the point in comparison to the OpenAI models. So I was consistently using Claude models for my software engineering tasks. I wanted to use the OpenAI model but the outcome was subpar to the Claude model. Though in general, I was heavily using ChatGPT for day-to-day AI chatting (proofreading, research, etc.) while I transitioned to Claude for software engineering tasks.

When I first used Agentic mode, I was blown away by what it could do. It carried out multistep workflows — making changes in files, testing the changes, looking into the console for errors — all to achieve a specific goal. It was a breakthrough because now with a model which is intelligent enough to not make mistakes, when combined with the Agentic toolchain, it was solving my problems really effectively. I don’t recall the exact time frame when I started using Agentic mode first — maybe the second half of last year.

In the last few months, I started using Agentic mode as the default way of working. One day, I tried Copilot CLI and I was impressed by the minimalism and it felt roomier than VS Code. I observed I am not using VS Code as much as I did before. I think it’s natural because when you are doing Agentic-based work you are not using many of the editing capabilities which VS Code provides, and those features started feeling like bloat.

Today it seems I transitioned to Claude Code CLI at work because I got a Claude Enterprise subscription from work and a pro subscription for personal use. I bought a Claude Pro subscription personally but it is useless for any meaningful coding work as it hits the limit so fast.