u/CuriousClara_25

I've been trying out different AI tools for coding and building small projects, but there so many options that its's hard to know what's actually worth using.

I'm mostly interested in tools that help with things like writing code, debugging, working with existing projects, or quickly getting an idea into a working app.

For those of you who use AI for development what tools have you actually stuck with, and what do you use them for? I'd especially like to hear about tools that have been genuinely useful beyond the first few experiments.

I like the idea of building apps through chat, but I'd rather keep my projects on my own machine instead of putting everything in the cloud.

Ideally, I'd like to use my own API keys or models and still be able to open the project in a normal editor when I need to.

Has anyone here found something that works well for this?