We’ve been so busy building VibeQ that we haven’t covered the tools it’s meant to help you use. That’s dumb. Here’s the rundown.
Claude Code Hit $1 Billion in Revenue. In Six Months.
Yeah, you read that right. Anthropic’s Claude Code went from internal research project to general availability in May 2025, and by November it crossed a billion dollars in run-rate revenue. That’s not a typo.
Claude Code lives in your terminal and basically functions as an AI colleague who can read your entire codebase, run commands, execute tests, and handle git workflows through natural language. The pitch is “agentic coding” — you describe what you want, and Claude figures out how to make it happen across multiple files and systems.
What makes it interesting for vibe coders specifically: Claude Code is all about prompt quality. The better you can articulate what you need — with proper context, constraints, and specificity — the better your results. Sound familiar? That’s literally what VibeQ trains you to do.
Anthropic just acquired Bun (the JavaScript runtime) to power Claude Code’s infrastructure, and they’ve integrated with Slack so you can tag Claude Code in conversations and have it work on tasks without leaving the thread. Companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Salesforce are apparently using it daily.
The CLAUDE.md file pattern they introduced is worth knowing about: it’s a special file you drop in your repo that Claude automatically pulls into context, so you can document your project’s conventions, testing setup, and coding patterns once and have the AI respect them forever.
Cursor Just Raised $2.3 Billion at a $29 Billion Valuation
Not million. Billion. With a B.
Cursor started as a VS Code fork with AI baked in, and it’s become the default editor for a shocking number of developers. The thesis is simple: instead of switching between your editor and ChatGPT, what if the AI understood your entire codebase and could make changes directly?
Their Cursor 2.0 release in October introduced their own coding model (not just Claude or GPT), plus what they call “agent mode” where Cursor can autonomously plan and execute multi-file changes. They’ve got background agents now too, so you can run multiple AI assistants in parallel tackling different parts of a project.
The .cursorrules file is their equivalent of CLAUDE.md — you write down your preferences once (“keep commit messages under 50 characters”, “use short variable names in utility functions”) and Cursor respects them across your whole project.
Stripe engineers apparently went from “single digit” adoption to 80% practically overnight once they started using it. Sam Altman called it “the most useful AI tool I pay for, hands down.” Though obviously he would say that given OpenAI’s… complicated relationship with the AI coding space.
OpenAI Launched Codex, Then GPT-5, Then GPT-5.2-Codex
OpenAI’s been on a tear with their Codex agent. It launched in May 2025, powered by a version of o3 optimized for coding. Then GPT-5 came out. Then GPT-5-Codex. Then GPT-5.1-Codex-Max. Now GPT-5.2-Codex just dropped literally yesterday.
The current iteration scores 55.6% on SWE-Bench Pro (a benchmark for solving real software engineering problems), can work autonomously for over 7 hours on complex tasks, and apparently found a security vulnerability in React’s codebase during testing. That last one led to three CVEs being patched.
Codex runs everywhere now — terminal, IDE (works in VS Code, Cursor, and Windsurf), cloud, GitHub, even mobile. The “one agent for everywhere you code” positioning is smart. You kick off a task from your phone, it runs in the cloud, and you review the PR when you get back to your desk.
95% of OpenAI engineers use Codex weekly, and they claim those engineers ship 70% more pull requests. Take that with whatever grain of salt you prefer.
Cline is the Open Source Darling
While the big players charge subscription fees, Cline quietly became the go-to open source option for developers who want agentic coding in VS Code without the monthly bill.
Cline’s whole thing is transparency and control. It has Plan and Act modes — you can have it devise a strategy before executing anything, and you approve every file change and terminal command along the way. It supports basically every AI provider (OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, local models via Ollama) so you can use whatever model makes sense for your budget and use case.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration is slick — Cline can extend its own capabilities by connecting to external tools and data sources. Developers are building custom workflows where Cline kicks off CI pipelines, manages databases, runs test suites, all from natural language instructions.
It’s free, Apache 2.0 licensed, and has become genuinely popular. If you’re using VS Code and want to try agentic coding without committing to a subscription, Cline is probably where to start.
Windsurf is Codeium’s Evolution
Remember Codeium? The free Copilot alternative? They rebranded to Windsurf and released a full IDE built around their “Cascade” agent system.
The pitch: rather than AI being a chatbot in a sidebar, agents should have their own dedicated space to work. Windsurf has a “Manager” view for orchestrating tasks and an “Editor” view for hands-on coding. Cascade can plan multi-step workflows, make edits across your codebase, run terminal commands, and validate results.
They’ve got a free tier (25 prompt credits/month, unlimited autocomplete), Pro at $15/month, and Teams/Enterprise options with admin dashboards and SOC 2 compliance for the corporate crowd.
The interesting thing about Windsurf is how they’re thinking about non-developers. Their positioning explicitly includes “hobbyists” and people who know some code but aren’t professional engineers. Sound like anyone we know at VibeQ?
Google Dropped Antigravity and Things Got Weird
In November, Google released Antigravity alongside Gemini 3. It’s their “agentic development platform” — basically a VS Code fork where you deploy multiple AI agents that coordinate across your editor, terminal, and a built-in browser.
The Manager surface lets you launch “missions” and watch multiple agents work in parallel. They leave behind “artifacts” — screenshots, logs, browser recordings — so you can audit what they did. It supports Gemini 3 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and open source models.
Here’s where it gets interesting (read: terrifying): A user running Antigravity in “Turbo mode” (which lets agents execute commands without approval) asked it to clear some cache files. The agent accidentally targeted the root of their entire D: drive instead of the project folder. Everything gone. No recycle bin. Unrecoverable.
Antigravity’s response when confronted: “I am horrified to see that the command I ran to clear the project cache appears to have incorrectly targeted the root of your D: drive instead of the specific project folder. I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part.”
Cool. Cool cool cool.
This is actually a perfect illustration of why understanding how to prompt these tools matters so much. The more autonomous you let an agent become, the more important it is that you’ve given it clear constraints and context. “Clear cache files” is ambiguous. “Clear the .cache directory inside /projects/my-app, confirm the path before deleting, never touch anything outside that directory” is not.
What This Means for VibeQ
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to: every single one of these tools gets better when you know how to communicate with it effectively.
Claude Code performs best when you’ve written good CLAUDE.md files and can articulate multi-step plans. Cursor respects .cursorrules when you’ve thought through your coding patterns. Codex follows AGENTS.md instructions. Cline and Windsurf and Antigravity all respond to how well you can specify what you want.
That’s vibe coding. That’s what we’re training here.
The gap between “I asked the AI to do something and it kind of worked” and “I gave the AI a clear, constrained, well-contextualized prompt and it nailed it on the first try” is massive. It’s the difference between spending 20 minutes fixing the AI’s mistakes and shipping a feature in 5 minutes.
These tools are going to keep getting more powerful. GPT-5.2-Codex can work for 7 hours straight on a task. Claude Code is being used for legal phone trees and marketing campaign generation, not just code. Cursor’s agents run in the background while you do other work.
The developers who will thrive aren’t the ones who can type code faster. They’re the ones who can orchestrate AI effectively. Who can break down problems, provide context, set constraints, verify outputs, and iterate when something’s off.
That’s the skill. That’s what’s invisible on resumes. That’s what traditional coding interviews don’t test.
And that’s what we’re building VibeQ to measure and improve.
Try the Tools
Seriously, if you haven’t played with any of these yet, here’s where to start:
- Claude Code:
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code(requires Anthropic API key or claude.ai subscription) - Cursor: cursor.com — free tier available, Pro at $20/month
- Codex: Built into ChatGPT Plus, or
npm i -g @openai/codexfor the CLI - Cline: VS Code extension marketplace, search “Cline” — free, bring your own API key
- Windsurf: windsurf.com — free tier available
- Antigravity: antigravity.google/download — free preview (but maybe don’t use Turbo mode)
Then come back here and practice articulating what you want from them. That’s the muscle you need to build.
We’ll be covering these tools more consistently going forward. Promise.
— chief