From Autocomplete to Agent: The State of AI Coding Tools
AI coding tools fall into three tiers: inline autocomplete, chat-based assistants, and autonomous agents — each with a different trust model.

The AI apps and dev tools you actually build on.
AI coding tools fall into three tiers: inline autocomplete, chat-based assistants, and autonomous agents — each with a different trust model.
Most RAG quality problems are retrieval problems, not generation problems — if the right chunk isn't fetched, the best model can't save you.
An agent is just an LLM in a loop with tools — the power and the fragility both come from that loop.
A vector database stores embeddings and finds nearest neighbours fast — that's the whole job.
The clever 'magic phrase' era of prompting is over — modern models don't need incantations.
Most of the AI stack is now commodity — building it yourself usually wastes effort that should go into your actual differentiation.
AI cost scales with tokens, not requests — a feature can be cheap per call and ruinous at volume.