AI Coding Tips Thread

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There's a few AI threads knocking about now, but thought one just focused on coding tools would be good.

The state of the art is moving so rapidly at the moment, and new tools and tech appearing so fast, it's hard to stay on top. Share your best tips here!

Today I've been configuring a couple of Sub Agents in Claude. One is a miserable C++ programmer like me that is an old school guy that insists on clean, well engineering code, with minimal dependencies. One is a Fintech specific reviewer that ensures certain domain specific stuff is adhered to.

I've added a pre-commit hook to Claude to make sure any changes are run past both these sub agents. Works really well, it now addresses all teh stuff that I was having to nag Claude about before.

Second thing today, I've added the Playwright MCP server, which is a web automation system (that we also use for E2E testing). What this means is that Claude can inspect the debug browser window (web app I'm developing), and instead of guessing it's got things right, it can now capture screenshots and inspect the images, click through the app, and make sure it actually works as expected. Pretty cool stuff.

 

[mid_gen]

I haven't really been making full use of AI when coding. I have Github Copilot which I use in the Jetbrains IDEs, Visual Studio Code and Xcode. I basically just have the chat screen open and ask it questions about my code. For more detailed answers I have Google Gemini Pro through my Google Workspace account which is very good for detailed replies.

I should look into optimising my usage though or look at all the available alternatives. Any hints and tips gratefully received .

I don't type code anymore, full stop.

My workflow revolves entirely around directing Claude to do the typing for me, it's much faster than I could hope to be. Lots of tips and tricks involved to get things to work efficiently though.

My first pro tip though, is to use Claude rather than CoPilot.

Anthropic are the leaders in practical implementations of LLM tools, they are leading the way with things like MCP, and I think their Sub Agent architecture is so much simpler and easier to work with than LangGraph.

 

[mid_gen]

Been refining my workflow a bit yesterday and this morning. Getting to the point now with this Playwright MCP, sub agent tester and reviewer, that I can pretty reliably just give Claude a ticket ID, and then set it off working for a while, and come back to review the change after it's been properly E2E tested for me.