Ides And Editors: Vs Code, Cursor, Anti Gravity

The IDE landscape has split. There are two camps:

CAMP 1: GENERAL-PURPOSE IDES with AI features bolted on. VS Code (free, Microsoft) is still the default. The Continue and Cline extensions add agent capabilities. GitHub Copilot adds inline completion. If you already know VS Code, the upgrade path is to add these extensions, not switch editors.

CAMP 2: AI-NATIVE IDES designed around agent workflows from day one. Cursor is a fork of VS Code with deep AI integration. Anti Gravity (Google's agentic IDE) takes the same general approach with Google's models in the loop. Both are paid, both are designed around the premise that you're going to spend most of your day talking to an agent rather than typing code character by character.

Which to pick:

If you're brand new and you've never used VS Code, start with VS Code + Continue. It's free. It's well-documented. The agent integration is good enough. You can upgrade to Cursor or Anti Gravity later if you outgrow it.

If you're already a VS Code power user with custom keybindings, extensions, and muscle memory, Cursor is the easiest jump because it inherits most of your VS Code setup.

If you want the most aggressive agent-native experience and you don't have legacy VS Code habits, Anti Gravity is worth a look.

A separate path: CLAUDE CODE in the terminal. Claude Code is a command-line agent that operates in your repo, reads your files, edits them, and runs commands. It's not an IDE — it's a separate tool that works alongside whatever editor you use. Many people run VS Code in one window and Claude Code in a terminal in another. This is the workflow I use most days.

Whichever you pick, the IDE is not the work. The work is the specification (Part 2) and the verification (Part 6). The IDE is just the room you do the work in.