Continuing in my AI-assisted coding spelunking, I’ve been trying some different tools this week with surprising (to me) results!
I’ve started experimenting with Augment Code, which offers plugins for VS Code and JetBrains IDEs. It’s similar to Copilot, but in practice, it feels much more sophisticated and robust.
I’ve been using both Augment and Copilot with Claude, so it is theoretically backed by the same AI. But Augment delivers an experience that feels a lot more smooth.
Augment’s context management is like magic. I haven’t yet gotten into a situation where it has had “too much” context and has gotten confused. But with Copilot, I have learned to start fresh with a new agent between each task to limit the context I’m carrying forward.
Augment’s tool usage also seems more sophisticated. It has reached for debugging tools and tricks that I haven’t seen Claude use with Copilot, and it has felt more mature and effective as a result. I have also not been running into Copilot’s rate limits or tool usage limits that stop me and force me to drop out of context until I can resume later. Augment just smoothly continues working until the task is complete.
I don’t know how much of this perception is a more polished UX and how much it is related to how each team has chosen to implement their agentic workflows, but it has been an interesting experience to see such varying results with the same underlying model!