Staff React dev here, my day job don't allow the use of any AI coding tools, so I haven’t really haven't gotten the reps in.

Starting next week I'll be going on a sabatical for the next 3 months, I’m building a journal app for my new born daughter. I've got the rough architecture filled out and I want to use this project to really try out vibe coding and get comfortable with agents and the new coding workflow.

I'm now debating which way to go.

I’m aware of AI native IDEs like Cursor, Kiro and now Antigravity, which looks like at least is partially built on vs code.

I also see CLI options like Claude code and OpenAI's codex, do you all have the terminal open and go back and forth between the two?

Lastly what about VS code extensions like kilo code, cline or kombai? I've never heard of any of these, i'm willing to switch IDE or terminal in the future but for now I prefer to stay in plain VS Code with an addon extension.

Basically, if you want least changes to the VS Code environment, how would you set up a coding agents and which ones are best with frontend React work?

SOLVED ✅

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for recommendations for a solid AI coding assistant/extension to use with Visual Studio Code (VS Code).

My most important constraint is that the tool must be completely free to use, with no paid tiers, no subscription, or generous free tiers with daily/monthly limits. I'm ideally looking for an open-source solution, an officially free tool, or a method that leverages a free API/local setup without incurring any costs.

Here is what I am looking for:

Platform/IDE: Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension.

Cost: Absolutely Free (No trial, no credit card required, no paid features that are essential)

Primary Use Case:

• Code generation from natural language/comments

• Debugging/error explanation

Need:

I'm looking for an assistant that is good at planning, context awareness across multiple files, and generating clean, integrated solutions, not just isolated snippets.

Programming Language:

Mainly Python and maybe some html.

You know that feeling. You're deep in a coding session, Claude only lets you upload 20 files, and every new chat you're starting from scratch re-uploading everything and losing all your context. Got fed up and built something to fix it.

SendToAI bundles your entire project into one clipboard paste. Visual file picker so you choose exactly which files get included, live token counts that update as you select, and cost estimates for Haiku, Sonnet and Opus so you know what you're spending before you hit send.

It has three bundle modes — full project, just your open tabs, or only your git changes. Three output formats too including Claude XML for structured prompts and a compact mode that strips comments and saves around 20% on tokens.

The feature I use most is project notes. Type in your stack, your architecture, anything you want the AI to know — it gets prepended to every bundle automatically so you never have to re-explain your codebase again.

Respects your .gitignore, skips node_modules and binaries automatically, and a typical project costs about $0.04 to send on Haiku.

Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any AI that accepts text.

Free on the VS Code marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=OxainZ.sendtoai

Would love to know what features you want added

I’ve been trying out a few AI coding extensions in VS Code lately, Copilot, Codeium, Blackbox, and Cursor. They all work fine in different ways, but I haven’t really settled on one yet. Just wondering what others are using and liking these days, and what should I best invest in??

What is the best AI VS code extension in your opinion? Which one do you use or used before? Why you switched and what extension you chosed to go with? I am mainly interested in autocompletion and preferably free. I use Codeium for autocompletion, it is absolutely free, but I think it is far from being best. Not sure which model it uses for autocompletion, probably gpt4 non o version. I heard that Cursor AI is great, but it's like an entire new code editor and I don't want to switch, even though it is based on VS code and very similar. Sometimes I use Deepseek V3 on their website, it really helps not just solving problems I encounter and can't solve myself, but also showing new ways to programm stuff, I look at it's code and learn new things. I think having Deepseek V3 as a code extension would be the best choice for me, since it is free and very capable in code, but I don't know such extension. So, what is the best VS code AI extension as of January 2025? Thanks in advance.

What are the AI extensions you using for VSCode? I’m searching for some extensions to integrate ChatGPT or similar free AI platforms. Any thoughts?

I've tried TabNine but has this sin of refactoring my code even when I ask only to suggest a documentation for it. Yet for now I think it's still the most useful free one on the market. I've tried others but still none has been proven as satisfying. Any suggestions?

EDIT: Also, do you have any open source suggestions? Pls specify it when you comment

All the ones I've looked into so far seem to involve connecting to someone else's server.

|

And if you don't know the answer to that; do you know of another good sub for me to ask this?

I'm trying to figure out the best way to integrate AI coding assistants into my VSCode setup. There seem to be a lot of options out there, and I'm feeling a bit lost.

Here's what I've found so far:

Extensions:

• Continue

• CodeGPT

• Autocoder

• Cody

• Cake

• Twinny

• Rift

• Turbopilot

• Wizarcoder-vsc

Open-weight models:

• Codestral

• DeepSeek Coder

• Llama 3

• StarCoder 2

• CodeLlama

• Google CodeGemma

• Granite Code

I've also heard about GPT4All and Ollama as potential options.

What are you all using? What works well? Any recommendations for someone just starting to explore AI coding assistants in VSCode?

Started to learn coding in my own time, which AI model do you recommend?

I currently have an AWS subscription. Which extensions for VSC should I install? I am learning powershell, terraform and ansible.

I’m a JavaScript/React developer with 10+ years of experience, and I’ve been using VSCode for a long time. However, my recent jobs didn’t allow the use of AI coding assistants, so I haven’t kept up with the latest developments in the field.

Now that I’m working on a personal project, I’d like to give AI-assisted coding a try. I’m aware of GitHub copilot, but with the rapid advancements in AI coding tools, I wonder what the best options are today. Are there assistants that integrate particularly well with vscode? Do any alternatives offer significant advantages over copilot?

What’s your favorite AI coding IDE or VS Code extension right now and why?

I feel like the AI dev stack is changing every few months. Cursor, Copilot, Codeium, Continue, Cody, random new plugins popping up every week. Some feel like magic, some slow me down, some are great until they hallucinate my entire codebase 💀

I’m curious what people are actually using day to day, not marketing screenshots.

- What stuck for you?

- What did you uninstall fast?

- Any underrated tools nobody’s talking about?

- Or are you still raw-dogging VS Code with no AI at all?

Drop your setup, hot takes welcome.

I've tried a proprietary one and it does speed me up a bit, but soon I'll run out of credits. Also, I'm partial to FOSS. So I'm thinking I could run something like Qwen2.5-Coder (or similar) on a free tier, or at a low cost, on some cloud somewhere, and hook it up. Thanks in advance!

Copilot is frustrating because sometimes I want to ask it things and the chat feature can't actually look at the code in my folder/the code I have opened up. Is there a better alternative?

All Copilot can do these days is repeat incorrect answers and show my own code to me like it's some solution to a problem. I will beg it to say literally anything other than the same identical incorrect response that I've already rejected 15 times, try to feed it different ideas to break it out of the loop... nope, just, "Have you tried that thing I suggested? the one that you've repeatedly told me doesn't work? maybe you should try it again!" It makes my blood boil.

I then put the same prompt into plain ol' ChatGPT 4o and it often nails the problem.

How a chatbot trained on coding could be so much worse at coding than a general use chatbot is besides the point, which is that clearly GitHub have dropped the ball here and it's time to move on.

What are some other good AI coding extensions that people use that integrate well with VSCode?

If you use Copilot CLI or Claude Code, you've hit this moment.

15 prompts in. Something's broken. You have no idea which one did it.

Undo won't help — it only works for edits made inside VS Code. Local History missed it — CLI agents write files at the OS level. Git has nothing — you didn't commit.

So you're left doing git diff and praying.

I built CLI Timeline to fix this. It reads session data your CLI tool already writes locally and gives you a per-prompt view of everything that changed.

What it does:

• Every prompt logged with the files it touched

• Side-by-side diff per prompt

• One-click revert — single file or the entire prompt

• Share sessions to your repo so teammates can see exactly what your AI did, no screen sharing needed

Zero config. Nothing leaves your machine. Works with Copilot CLI and Claude Code today.

Still a work in progress — would genuinely love feedback and bug reports.

👉 https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ayushagg31.cli-timeline