Heidelberg AICurriculum
Track 13 · Advanced

Write code

code with AI in your repo

This track teaches you how to bring AI into your own codebase and work with it as a teammate. After completing the track you will be able to write product requirements and specs before coding, run voice-controlled agents, use terminal agents like Codex, Claude Code, Aider, opencode and jcode to read, edit and execute code, collaborate with AI assistants inside editors such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity and Devin Desktop, and tell which of them is the right shape for the job in front of you. Start with "Product requirements & spec engineering" to set up clear specs, then move into "AI coding assistants" and work through the tools underneath it: the terminal agents first (Codex, Claude Code, Aider, opencode, jcode, and the voice-driven opencode + voice), then the editor integrations (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity, Devin Desktop). If you need to move quickly, cover at least one terminal agent and one editor assistant and skip the rest of the deep dives. What this track deliberately does not cover is making any of them dependable on a large, real repository, or the repository platforms the work lives in. That is its own track: "Building complex codebases". Pick your tool here, make it reliable there.

15 chapters 632 recipes Advanced 0/15 done
Comparison matrix from AI coding assistants

AI that writes code with you, inside a codebase you already have. Unlike the app builders (Lovable, Base44) that spin up a whole app from a prompt, these work alongside your existing project: they read your files, run commands, and fix bugs with you. The tag shows where each one runs — a terminal, a full IDE, or an editor extension. → Not sure which? Pick by what you want: deepest whole-repo reasoning → Claude Code; inline autocomplete as you type → Copilot; an AI-native IDE → Cursor or Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf); a git-native terminal tool that commits each step → Aider; fully open-source on your own model → opencode; open-source with local models, memory and agent swarms → jcode.

claude-code
codex
opencode
aider
jcode
cursor
windsurf
antigravity
copilot
Where it runs
terminal
terminal
terminal
terminal
terminal
IDE
IDE
IDE
extension
Works in your existing repo
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Free / open-source
no
no
yes
yes
yes
partial
partial
partial
partial
Bring your own model
no
no
yes
yes
yes
partial
partial
partial
no
Agentic multi-file edits
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
partial
Runs commands / tests
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
partial
Beginner-friendly
partial
partial
partial
partial
partial
yes
yes
partial
yes
The chapters outline order · updated · your progress · recipe load