I've been talking to my editor, asking one AI model to review another's work, and letting agents check their changes in the browser. These are a few of the things I've been doing lately to make everyday development a little more efficient.
Most of my work involves Angular applications, including multiple apps in a monorepo with shared libraries.
That's where these habits come from, but many of them apply regardless of your framework.
Some are simple conveniences. Others help me get better results from coding agents. And a few come with tradeoffs that I've learned to watch for.
I've played around with Claude Code, but Cursor is still where I feel most comfortable.
Coming from VS Code, the editor feels familiar, and I like having the AI features right there alongside my code.
When I first started using Cursor, tab completion was the feature that impressed me most. I was writing more code by hand then, and it was easily one of my favorite parts of the experience.
But whenever I need to get in and make a change myself, that tab completion is still useful.
For me, that combination works well. Let an agent build something, then jump into the code when I need to (which is very rare these days).
One of the first things I do when working on an Angular project is to ensure the Angular agent skills are installed.
These help guide the agent toward more consistent results when generating components, directives, services, and other Angular code. They also give it guidance around current features and best practices.
I still review the result, but giving the agent that context up front really helps.
There are some great tools out there for this, like Wispr Flow (Paid) or Handy (Free). But for now, I'm just using native dictation.
I'm already describing what I want in natural language, so saying it out loud often feels easier than typing it. And since I'm not the best typist, it cuts down on some of the spelling mistakes too.
Add a welcome message to the home page. Make it its own component, and make it really colorful.
It's particularly helpful when I have several details in mind and want to get them into the prompt quickly.
Review these changes. Make sure they're as simple and minimal as possible, and that everything we added is actually necessary.
I want the review to question whether the added code needs to exist, as well as whether it works.