Getting Started with AI Coding Assistants

1 min read

This is part 1 of the series Building with AI Tools

AI coding assistants have gone from novelty to necessity in a remarkably short time. If you write code for a living, you’ve probably already tried one — or at least heard your coworkers talking about them.

What Are AI Coding Assistants?

At their core, AI coding assistants are tools that use large language models to help you write, understand, and debug code. They range from inline autocomplete (like GitHub Copilot) to full conversational agents (like Claude Code) that can read your codebase, make changes across files, and run commands.

Why This Series?

This series documents my experience building a real project — this blog — with AI assistance at every step. Not toy examples or cherry-picked demos, but the actual messy process of shipping something.

We’ll cover:

  • Setting up your environment for AI-assisted development
  • Effective prompting strategies for code generation
  • When AI helps and when it gets in the way
  • Practical workflows that blend human judgment with AI speed

What You’ll Need

To follow along, you’ll want:

  • A code editor (VS Code recommended)
  • An AI coding assistant (we’ll primarily use Claude Code)
  • Basic familiarity with Git and the command line
  • Curiosity and a healthy dose of skepticism

In the next part, we’ll set up a development environment optimized for AI-assisted coding and write our first AI-generated feature.

aitoolsgetting-started

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