Coding agent
An AI agent specialised for software-engineering tasks. Exposes file editing, terminal execution, code search, and git operations as tools and pursues multi-step coding goals like "add a /signup route with tests".
Background
A coding agent is the application of agent architecture to software development. It typically wraps an LLM (Claude, GPT, Gemini) with a sandboxed runtime — file system, terminal, browser — and a planner that decomposes a user task into steps. Examples range from CLI-first agents (Aider, Claude Code) to managed-cloud agents (Devin, Replit Agent) to in-editor agents (Cursor Composer, Windsurf Cascade). Quality is measured by SWE-bench, success on real PRs, and total token cost per task.
Tools that use it
- 01→OpenHands
Open-source autonomous coding agent platform, formerly OpenDevin, by All Hands AI.
- 02→Devin
Cognition's autonomous software engineer — runs tasks in a managed cloud sandbox with browser, terminal, and editor.
- 03→Cline
Open-source autonomous coding agent for VS Code, formerly known as Claude Dev.
- 04→Aider
Open-source CLI coding agent that pair-programs in your terminal and commits to git automatically.
- 05→Claude Code
Anthropic's official CLI agent for Claude — runs in the terminal, edits files, executes commands, and ships PRs.
- 06→Windsurf
AI code editor by Codeium with Cascade agent for autonomous multi-step coding tasks.
- 07→Cursor
AI code editor forked from VS Code with built-in agent, multi-file edits, and tab-completion.