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CodeTaste

AI coding and Vibe coding blog driven by passion

AI Tools That Actually Work

Cut through the hype and discover AI coding tools that genuinely improve your workflow. Real reviews from real developers, not marketing fluff.

Build With Taste

Learn the difference between code that works and code that delights. Practical insights on creating software that users actually want to use.

Beyond Just Coding

Explore the intersection of technical skill and creative vision. How to use AI as a tool while keeping your unique developer voice.

Featured AI Coding Tools

IDEs

Zed

IDEs
8.8/10

An open-source, high-performance code editor built from the ground up in Rust. It prioritizes speed, low latency, and native real-time collaboration. It integrates agentic AI editing and offers flexibility with BYOK and local LLM support.

Switching to Zed feels like taking off a...

Cursor

IDEs
8.5/10

An 'AI-first' code editor, forked from VS Code, designed to be highly productive. It integrates agentic workflows for complex, multi-file tasks and features deep codebase awareness for context-aware chat and 'magical' predictive editing.

Man, Cursor is just... what Copilot shou...

Windsurf

IDEs
7.8/10

An enterprise-focused, agentic IDE built on VS Code. Its flagship 'Cascade' engine is designed to execute complex, multi-step tasks by leveraging deep codebase understanding and real-time awareness of developer actions. Now partnered with Cognition (creators of Devin).

Windsurf's `Cascade` agent is seriously ...

Visual Studio Code

IDEs
7.5/10

Microsoft's free, open-source code editor that has become the industry standard. It features extensive extension support, integrated terminal, debugging capabilities, and Git integration. Highly customizable and supports virtually every programming language.

Look, VSCode itself isn't groundbreaking...

CLI

sst/opencode (OpenCode)

CLI
9.2/10

A 100% open-source and 'provider-agnostic' CLI agent. Its core philosophy is developer freedom, supporting over 75 LLM providers (including local models) in a 'Bring Your Own Key' model. It features a responsive TUI and deep LSP integration.

OpenCode is the tool I was waiting for s...

Gemini CLI

CLI
8.7/10

Google's open-source AI agent for the terminal, leveraging the Gemini models. It can edit large codebases, supports multimodal input, and uses Google Search to ground its responses. Notable for its extremely generous free tier.

Google's Gemini CLI is wild. The agentic...

Claude Code

CLI
8/10

Anthropic's flagship programming agent, powered by the Claude 3.5 Opus model. It excels at understanding project-wide context and handling complex, multi-step tasks, showing changes as a diff in the IDE before applying.

Using Claude Code feels like working wit...

Charm Crush CLI

CLI
8/10

An open-source AI coding agent developed by Charmbracelet, designed to operate directly within the terminal. It functions as a coding assistant, enabling users to interact with various Large Language Models (LLMs) for tasks such as writing and debugging code.

Charm Crush CLI is visually appealing wi...

Plugin/Extensions

Kilo Code

Plugin/Extensions
8.2/10

A free and open-source VSCode extension that merges features from Roo Code and Cline. It offers multiple operational modes and doesn't require users to bring their own API keys.

Kilo Code is a fantastic all-in-one tool...

Roo Code

Plugin/Extensions
8/10

An open-source, highly customizable VSCode extension that allows for direct file manipulation and terminal command execution. It's flexible with AI models but can be expensive due to high token consumption.

Roo Code is for developers who want deep...

Cline

Plugin/Extensions
7.9/10

An open-source, 'bring-your-own-key' VSCode extension that offers a high degree of transparency and control. It supports various AI models and can execute terminal commands and browser actions.

Cline is all about transparency. I love ...

Coding Models

GPT-5

Coding Models
9.5/10

OpenAI's latest flagship model, featuring a smart router that automatically selects between a fast model for simple tasks and a deep reasoning model for complex problems. It boasts state-of-the-art performance in coding, math, and writing, with a 272k token context window.

GPT-5 is a powerhouse. The unified syste...

Gemini 2.5 Pro

Coding Models
9.2/10

Google's 'thinking model' with advanced reasoning and native multimodality. It supports a 1 million token context window and excels at complex problem-solving, coding, and generating nuanced audio outputs. 'Deep Think' mode allows for parallel thinking to tackle difficult tasks.

Gemini 2.5 Pro is a beast for complex, m...

Qwen3 Coder

Coding Models
8.8/10

A series of open-source, agentic code models from Alibaba Cloud. Available in multiple sizes, it supports a 256k token context length (extendable to 1M) and excels at tool-calling and multi-turn interactions. It's designed for deep integration with various coding agents and IDEs.

Qwen3 Coder is a fantastic open-source o...

Kimi K2

Coding Models
8.5/10

An open-weight, 1-trillion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model from Moonshot AI. It's designed for agentic intelligence, with strong performance in coding, tool use, and autonomous problem-solving. It supports a 128k token context window and is available on Hugging Face.

Kimi K2 is an impressive open-weight mod...