Claude Code
My only paid IDE/terminal tool. It runs in the terminal, VS Code, JetBrains, the desktop app and the web on the same engine: CLAUDE.md, settings and MCP servers follow you from one surface to the next. Skills use the open Agent Skills format (SKILL.md), which Cursor also loads, including from `.claude/skills/`. Client of the official Figma MCP server. It's my primary dev environment.
Strengths
- Full git workflows (issues → code → PR) autonomously from terminal
- Deep codebase understanding with multi-file edits and shell execution
- Built-in guardrails: permission modes with confirmation before destructive actions, hooks before and after each tool action
- GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD integration to automate PR review and issue triage
- One engine across five surfaces (terminal, VS Code, JetBrains, desktop app, web): CLAUDE.md, settings and MCP follow you
- Opus 5.5 is the default model on a subscription, native 1M-token context, Opus planning then Sonnet execution with `opusplan`
- Cost is steerable rather than suffered: the advisor tool (experimental, Anthropic API only) puts the cheap model in the driver seat and escalates to the expensive one only when needed. Anthropic measures, with Sonnet 4.6 advised by Opus, 2.7 more points on SWE-bench Multilingual at 11.9% lower cost per task
Limitations
- Cost climbs fast: Anthropic reports $13 per developer per active day on average in enterprise, $150-250 per month, and every subagent spends its own context
- On a subscription, session and weekly usage limits apply across all models: hitting them stops work until the reset unless you buy usage credits
- On native Windows, sandboxing is not supported: you need WSL 2 to run commands in a sandbox
Best for
- Senior devs automating full feature cycles end-to-end
- CI/CD pipelines and agentic background tasks
- Deep multi-file refactoring with safety guardrails