I really don't know what is it, but Claude Code just seems like an extremely well tuned package. You can have the same core models, but the internal prompts matter, how they are looking up extra context matters, how easy is it to add external context matters, how it applies changes matters, how eager is it to actually use an external tool to help you matters. With Claude Code, it just feels right. When I say I want a review, I get a review, when I want code, I get code, when I want just some git housekeeping, I get that.

I haven’t found massive performance between tools that use the same underlying LLM

The benefit of Claude Code is that you can pay a fixed monthly fee and get a lot more than you would with API requests alone.

I use neovim so claude code makes more sense to me. I think having the code agent independent from the code editor is a plus.

I use vim for most of my development, so I'm always in a terminal anyway. I like my editor setup, and getting the benefits of a coding assistant without having to drastically change my editor has huge value to me.

I went on n a bit of a YouTube frenzy last weekend on getting an overview of agentic tools.

A lot of people are saying that cursor is much worse than Claude Code who have used both.

The native tool use is a game changer. When I ask it to debug something it can independently add debug logging to a method, run the tests, collect the output, and code based off that until the tests are fixed.

I put Cursor as 4th of the tools I have tried. Claude Code, Junie, and Copilot all do work that I find much more acceptable.