Hacking Your Own AI Coding Assistant with Claude Pro and MCP
zbeegnew.dev
zbeegnew.dev
I'm not sure I would prefer it to using Cursor. I was using Claude Desktop client to edit a bunch of (non-code) text files a couple of days ago, and a couple of times it crashed, and I had to restart it. When this happened, it lost some conversation history, although of course the files it had already edited were fine.
There are other approaches to having Claude edit files, but they're less suited for use with MCP (and hence they don't save cost like the OP does).
A) Aider gives very specific instructions about how Claude should describe patch operations: https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider/blob/dd4d2420df51dc29c2aed...
This works, but I don't know if anyone has tried using this technique in an MCP server. It seems like the way OP and the Filesystem MCP might be superior for small edits, but Aider's approach might be better for multiple edits in a single request-response. It should be possible to do this with an MCP server.
B) Anthropic provides fine-tuned models (text_editor_20250124 and text_editor_20241022) that know a specific text editing protocol: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/tool-us...
You could build a coding assistant like Aider on top of these, but obviously you're then tied to this implementation and it's harder to switch out models. And it wouldn't work with Claude Desktop.
EDIT: I really like the way that each change generates a commit, and that all commits in a single session are squashed into one commit, whilst preserving the hash of each individual change.
EDIT2: I also like you only have one function (each command being a 'subtool'), which means Claude Desktop asks for permission only once per session.
Show HN: Codemcp – Claude Code for Claude Pro subscribers – ditch API bills - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43356016 - March 2025 (3 comments)
The article mentions a python MCP library, there seems to be a pretty vibrant golang MCP server as well at https://github.com/mark3labs/mcp-go. No personal experience, but I'd usually rather a binary than a python environment install when I can get it.
The other thing the author mentions is that Claude can author MCP integrations and merge them into your server -- sounds good to me!
I am confused that the author said he has privacy concerns about cursor, but the most satisfactory thing about cursor is that it asked me whether I want privacy mode at the beginning.
On the contrary, I am very skeptical about whether these websites with free quotas, not only claude, but also grok, chatgpt, etc., will use chat data for training.
If you are really worried about this, it is not impossible to deploy deepseek r1 locally now.
> We will not train our models on any Materials that are not publicly available, except in two circumstances:
> 1. If you provide Feedback to us (through the Services or otherwise) regarding any Materials, we may use that Feedback in accordance with Section 5 (Feedback).
> 2. If your Materials are flagged for trust and safety review, we may use or analyze those Materials to improve our ability to detect and enforce Acceptable Use Policy violations, including training models for use by our trust and safety team, consistent with Anthropic’s safety mission.
You have to read the terms carefully for everyone though, it's frustratingly hard work to keep up with these policies.
Anthropic do have a very interesting way of analyzing usage of their tools without exposing any data to their researchers: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/12/clio/
Also, doesn’t Claude Code count every input as “feedback?”
Plus, they forbid us from training on our own chat logs. That’s a form of vendor lock in. Way better to use local LLMs
At some point there ought to be a paradigm shift toward service providers with more reasonable legal terms (IMHO) but too often we pretend nobody reads them or cares
If they’re claiming not to learn from inputs, and we’re subject to prohibition about learning from outputs, what the heck is the point?
I still haven't found a setup that can fully comprehend a large "enterprise" codebase though. The scope has to be narrowed in to get something useful.
But for almost everything else and especially to do things where I previously would have stalled due to lack of time when hitting a learning code. It is a game changer. I can do things in hours that would have taken months before - or Claude can really..
I tried to describe a somewhat similar experience that I had last week here. The 4k char limit made me cut most of it away though.
- File manipulation - Directory manipulation - tree-sitter integration
and more.
I also installed Tavily Search, sequential thinking, and Playwright.
I still use Cursor for development, and I use Claude Desktop for higher-level documentation, testing, etc.
For example, I'll check out a new repo that is lacking in documentation. I'll get the app running, then explain to Claude where the code lives, how to access the real app, and how I want the features documented.
Then Claude will happily scan the codebase, take screenshots of the running app, etc., all by himself, and then create a report (through the artifact system) with visualizations, graphs, etc.
Anyway, I'm doing the same - one extra tip is to use the "project" feature of Claude Desktop to give your coding assistant some context - use it similar to .cursorrules.
What tool can I use to point it to a directory and give Claude access to the code? I don’t want to have to write my own server.
(It's not specifically made for coding.)
I still almost never see anyone using breakpoints / expression evaluation with LLMs. Feels critical to me.
Really excited about the evolution of these tools. I think LSP + DAP will be huge.
You chat with an AI and have a working app in minutes.
I've been building about 1 app per week lately and they're not trivial apps. They have UI, backend, database, audio, etc.
One fact checks audio in real time, another does semantic search for song lyrics.
A real-time translator, which translates the text to Spanish as I'm typing. I needed it to better communicate with a Tinder date. It has a nice javafx UI. It didn't occur to me to look for a translator app, since those come with restrictions/registration/ads/etc.
This is possible today. Give it a bit more time and it will be able to clone any existing app.
The question 'what are we going to do then?' visits me more often lately.
We will develop a new layer of profitable apps. Social apps will not stop to be a thing but it will be easy to create engaging ones.
I’ve gone through $25 USD in API credits in a single afternoon with Claude Code (I love it, but that thing is thirsty for dollar bills).
I’ve been reluctant to try this sort of thing out because it’s fairly trivial for them to detect this and potentially come down with the ban hammer. I’d rather not risk it.
Anyway, I’ve found myself switching back to Aider as of late because it is much more conservative in how it uses its token budget.
However, I do hope they do not plan to use the pricing that they are using for Claude max, as a single prompt usually generates about 50 tool calls for my use case. (In max this would cost me $5.05). I'll easily burn $50 to $100 per hour, and I haven't even added all the tools I'd like to use yet...
If it gets expensive, I'll probably only use it for architectural work, and use my own AI LLM for more tactical tasks.
This will be slower and less powerful, but we already have an AI server for image analysis, so it makes sense to use it.
Sure it’s a few pennies but it does add up. I’m sure there is some research or term / explanation for this phenomenon.