I don't understand why so many people building agents feel the need to fork and maintain a whole IDE as well

luca-ctx 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	bloppe 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok that makes more sense

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Bnjoroge 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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throwif 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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zabi_rauf 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I have the exact same setup and editor for me is just neovim as I can easily see changes (lazygit) and make small tweaks. The only thing I’m missing in my workflow is some isolation for running claude so I can let it go without having to approve tools.

	▲	rane 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For a container-based sandbox in tmux, see workmux and its sandboxing feature. The added isolation does come with some friction though, which is kind of by design.