I agree. I don’t think most of these products should be forking and maintaining a whole IDE.

That’s also not how I think about ctx. The UI is a workbench around agents, not a replacement for IntelliJ/VS Code. If you need deep code navigation, refactors, debugger-heavy work, etc., the right answer is usually to open the same worktree in your IDE.

ctx includes surfaces for diff review and an integrated terminal, but not code editing or a full-fledged IDE. It's not a fork of VSCode.

because you probably need both if you are doing guided agentic work. IDE gives you the familiar benefits, especially code nav. If you are using background agents or launching agents without reviewing their work, then I guess you dont need an IDE.