alt Hacker NewsI installed the copilot extension in my IDE, and switched on Agent mode.
I don't really get how the workflow is supposed to work, but I think it's mostly due to how the tool is made. It has like some sort of "change stack" similar to git commits/staging but which keeps conflicting with anything I manually edit.
Perhaps it's just this particular implementation (Copilot integration in VS) which is bad, and others are better? I have extreme trouble trying to feed it context, handling suggested AI changes without completely corrupting the code for even small changes.
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Make sure you’re clicking “Keep” to “approve” the changes. It’s annoying but I don’t think there is a way around having to do that. Then if you manually edit something, you can mention it in your next chat message, e.g., “I made a few changes to <file>. <Next instruction>”
Correct. Of the various ways to work, I find the in-IDE chat to be the worst. I rarely use it for anything other than “help me understand this line”.
Try one of the CLIs. That’s the good stuff right now. Claude Code (or similar) in your shell, don’t worry about agentic patterns, skills, MCP, orchestrators, etc etc. Just the CLI is plenty.
Hm, yeah maybe. I've tried Cursor once, but the entire experience was so horrible, and it was really hard to know what's going on.
The workflow I have right now, is something like what I put before, and I do it with Codex and Claude Code, both work the same. Maybe try out one of those, if you're comfortable with the terminal? It basically opens up a terminal UI, can read current files, you enter a prompt, wait, then can review the results with git or whatever VCS you use.
But I'm also never "vibe-coding", I'm reviewing every single line, and mercilessly ask the agent to refactor whenever the code isn't up to my standards. Also restart the agent after each prompt finished, as they get really dumb as soon as context is used more than 20% of their "max".