What IDE do you use when the AI is doing all the editing?
As terminal-based AI coding agents like Claude Code become primary development tools, a workflow pattern is solidifying: developers run an AI agent in one window while keeping a lightweight editor open purely for reading and navigating code. The editor becomes a monitoring tool, not a writing tool.
The requirements for this companion editor are surprisingly minimal. Syntax highlighting, a file tree, and search cover most needs. Debuggers, refactoring menus, and autocomplete matter less when the AI handles all file modifications directly. What matters most is the ability to quickly scan changes and verify the agent's work before it moves on.
For remote development over SSH, VS Code with the Remote-SSH extension remains the default choice - free, reliable with remote connections, and light enough to coexist with a resource-hungry AI agent. Zed is gaining traction for its raw speed, though remote support is still catching up.
This "AI writes, human reviews" split hints at where development tooling is headed. The best IDE for supervising an AI agent may turn out to be very different from the best IDE for writing code yourself - and most editor teams haven't started designing for that distinction yet.