Why are all these coding agents being created as terminal applications? Feels like the kind of thing that the tech industry would publish as an electron app.
Shell commands and files on disk are the classic narrow waist, and this type of tool, exemplified by Claude Code, locates a coding agent down in that ecosystem.
Why shouldn't you be able to use the abilities of this tool as a batch command, connected with all your other basic tools, in addition to interactive sessions?
Cursor's chat being locked in an IDE sidebar has felt like driving with a trailer attached. For some tasks the editor is secondary or unnecessary, and as a papered-over VS Code fork, Cursor has a lot of warts that you just had to accept. Now you can just use your favorite editor.
Companies make apps but want to be platforms, so they try to put everything in one app and help you forget about everything else. VS Code and Figma, for example, make their own extension ecosystems rather than connecting outward, because it makes them platforms-as-apps and harder to leave. But a desktop task workflow spans many apps and windows. You compose it yourself to your needs. We are computer users more than app users.
To me as a computer user, a tool that's compact and has compatible outward extension points feels good.
How and why would one script things like this? I thought the process was basically just talking to the agent and telling it what you want to do and reviewing the changes before they are committed.
Well. Agents use context and context window has limit. If you add too much to context you will get poor result. You can split your task in smaller ones and in result you might get much better result. E.g. migration of tests to new version of library.
