Three kinds of help
- Completion — suggestions as you type, from the next line to a whole function.
- Chat — ask questions about code, errors and libraries next to your editor.
- Agents — describe a task and the assistant reads files, edits several of them and runs commands, asking you to approve.
Well-known assistants
- GitHub Copilot — launched as a preview in 2021, originally powered by OpenAI's Codex; works inside popular editors.
- Cursor — a code editor built on Visual Studio Code with AI chat and editing at its centre.
- Claude Code — Anthropic's assistant that works in the terminal and can make changes across a project. See our getting-started guide.
Local options
Open code models such as Qwen2.5-Coder, Code Llama and DeepSeek Coder can run on your own hardware, and editor extensions can connect to them — useful when code must not leave your machine. ZIBADIS AI Lab runs Qwen2.5-Coder locally.
Working safely
- Read every change before you accept it.
- Run your tests; ask the assistant to write tests too.
- Never paste passwords, keys or private customer data into a cloud service.
- Commit often, so any change is easy to undo.
- Check licences when the assistant suggests large blocks of code.
Tools for this
Share this guide
Published by
Asaiejadoo — everyday calculation and AI guides, part of the ZIBADIS network founded by Masoud Moghaddam in Tehran.
