I'm surprised that people still aren't discussing Github Copilot baked into VSCode. I pair agent mode + Sonnet 4 + Sequential Thinking + Tavily MCP servers and it works wonders. I recently prototyped the first version of our SaaS with this setup in a minimal amount of time. Also worth nothing, the pricing is extremely reasonable. Free credits + pay per use. I frequently max out the free tier and have never spent more than $40 per month.

I second this. As a previous AI skeptic. VS Code with Agent Mode is amazing. Perfect amount of control over what the AI is doing. For me its been a game-changer. I would describe it as letting the AI do lots of the work and me being the guiding hand.

I will say, it is extremely important to have a good AGENTS.md file and other .md files that the agent can refer to when it needs to. Also having tests is more important than ever.

And when you notice common hiccups, document it in the AGENTS.md.