Anmol BaranwalThere are countless AI tools but only a few can actually improve the daily life of developers.
Today, I'm covering the 17 most powerful AI tools for developers.
I've tried to cover all the stuff so that you won't have to check their website to understand whether it will be useful, only reading this will be more than sufficient to make that choice!
Please note that I will cover projects that are either open source (so you can learn from the codebase) or provide a free tier version.
1. MarsCode - AI extension and IDE.
MarsCode provides an IDE and an AI extension to assist in your usual programming stuff. Most developers don't even know about Marscode but it has a lot of useful features!
Watch this quick demo to understand more!
Let's explore both of these in brief:
✅ AI IDE.
MarsCode IDE also provides a series of capabilities covering development, debugging, storage, deployment, schema generation, and more, greatly reducing development costs. You can refer to MarsCode IDE's docs.
✅ AI Extension.
They support 100+ programming languages and you can install it on VSCode.
It can generate API tests for you, fix your code and even write docs for your code.
At this point, many of you will be concerned about the privacy and security of your data. Although, they do assure that your data belongs to you!
Some of the other general features are:
⚡ Code completion, explanation and hassle-free debugging.
⚡ No download required, configuration-free, initialize dev environment with a simple click in the browser itself.
⚡ A series of tools for testing and development using AI plugins.
You can read the docs. You will find the tutorials for both AI plugin and IDE including all the development tools with detailed instructions.
It's not open source but it's free to use!
2. Automa - browser extension for automating your browser by connecting blocks.
This is one of the most unique ideas I've ever come across in my developer journey.
Automa is a low-code/no-code browser extension for browser automation. Instead of manually typing, clicking, and retrieving data from a website, Automa will help you automate doing all that.
Gives you the ability to auto-fill forms, do a repetitive task, take a screenshot, or scrape website data — the choice is yours. You can even schedule when the automation will execute!
Some of the unique features are:
⚡ Automa has provided various kinds of blocks that will help you do automation, and all you need to do is connect them.
⚡ You can set the workflow trigger on the trigger block to run every day or every time you visit a specific website.
They also provide a marketplace where you can find dozens of workflows shared by Automa users which you can add and customize.
It has a lot of crazy power to automate something without writing a single line of code. Damn useful!
You can read the docs and follow the quickstart guide.
You can install it locally using developer mode on Chrome and Firefox.
You can find it on Chrome web store and Firefox Add-ons.
Watch the complete walkthrough!
Automa is open source with 10.5k+ stars on GitHub.
3. Warp - Rust based terminal with AI built in.
Warp is a new high-performance terminal built entirely in Rust that makes you and your team more productive and the CLI easier to use. After all, great software starts on the command line :)
Warp is not available for Windows users which is a downside but they have released a Windows Waitlist.
You can watch this demo to know more at a quick glance!
I really liked their concept of blocks with a little context which we can further filter based on our keyword. You can even share it!
Warp provides three core things and a combination of those makes it very powerful. Let's see very briefly:
✅ Warp AI.
You should note that Warp AI is free to use up to 40 requests per user per month. That's a huge drawback!
⚡ You can find the right command by typing # on your command line and start describing the command you want to run using natural language.
⚡ You can use Ask Warp AI to explain any error in your command output. It will help you resolve it!
⚡ From new tool setups to complex database migrations, Warp AI can walk you through your programming workflows, step by step.
⚡ Warp lets you save your most important workflows in Warp Drive so you can run them on-demand or share them with your team. Let Warp AI handle the hard part of naming, describing, and parameterizing the command.
✅ Warp Drive.
Warp Drive is a secure space in your terminal where you can save and share interactive notebooks and reusable workflows.
⚡ Document your commonly used commands so you can search them by name and description. No more hunting for script.sh.
⚡ Autofill parameters with ease by creating named arguments with descriptions and default values.
✅ Agent mode.
This will definitely blow your mind.
You can read more on the official website or you can just watch the below video that summarizes the whole stuff :)
Most of the devs are always concerned about privacy which is obvious so you can read privacy overview while using Warp.
You can read the detailed guide on how to set up Warp on your machine.
Warp is "Offline" when you aren't connected to the internet but the cloud based features like block sharing still need internet access.
I also recommend reading the official blog by the team on how Warp works including all the technical details. It was written in 2021 but the foundations never change so it's always good to read in my opinion!
There is one strong alternative to warp that is Wave terminal which is completely open source with 3.5k stars on GitHub.
Warp is not open source but they do provide issues-only repo which has 20k+ stars on GitHub. The link is below!
4. Micro Agent - AI agent that writes (actually useful) code for you.
AI-assisted coding tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT don't produce very reliable code and they often don't work correctly right out of the box, you find bugs, edge cases, or even references to non-existent APIs.
This can lead to a frustrating loop of trying the generated code, finding issues, going back to the AI for fixes, and repeating.
The time spent debugging can negate the time saved by using AI tools in the first place.
Micro Agent claims to deliver the benefits of AI-assisted coding while mitigating the problems of unreliable code generation.
Give it a prompt, and it'll generate a test and then iterate on code until all test cases pass.
You can install it using this command.
npm install -g @builder.io/micro-agent
# Next, set your OpenAI API key when prompted or manually using this.
micro-agent config set OPENAI_KEY=<your token>
# Then you can run to start a new coding task
micro-agent
Micro Agent will prompt you to describe the function you want, generate tests, and start writing code in your preferred language to make the tests pass. Once all the tests are green, you'll have a fully functional, test-backed function ready to use.
Let's explore some of the most mind blowing use cases:
⚡ 30-second demo of Micro Agent generating tests and code for a TypeScript function that groups anagrams together from an array of strings.
⚡ Using Micro Agent to generate a simple HTML to AST parser (it was achieved on two iterations).
⚡ Unit test matching.
⚡ Visual matching (experimental).
⚡ Integration with Figma.
Micro Agent can also integrate with Visual Copilot to connect directly with Figma to ensure the highest fidelity possible design to code!
Visual Copilot connects directly to Figma to assist with pixel-perfect conversion, exact design token mapping, and precise usage of your components in the generated output.
Then, Micro Agent can take the output of Visual Copilot and make final adjustments to the code to ensure it passes TSC, lint, tests, and fully matches your design including final tweaks. Amazing right :)
You can read the docs and the official blog where the team discussed everything about the micro agent.
It's open source with 2.1k stars on GitHub.
5. What The Diff - AI assistant for your pull requests.
Pull requests are the heartbeat of your development process.
What The Diff helps you to make them accessible for everyone by writing pull request descriptions and sending out summarized notifications to keep non-technical stakeholders in the loop.
Some of the exciting features:
⚡ It analyzes the code changes in the diff of your pull request and writes a description of everything that was changed.
⚡ Receive a weekly report with the highlights of the week. The report is written by the AI and includes a summary of the most important pull requests. It can send the report to your team's Slack channel, to a manager via email, or use a webhook to send it to a custom system.
⚡ A lot of time is spent on code reviews with back and forth between the reviewer and the author - often about minor changes that could be done automatically.
Just comment on the lines of code that should be refactored with /wtd and describe the changes that you want. What The Diff will then suggest the changes in the pull request and you can accept them with a single click.
⚡ You can configure it to send notifications when someone on your team creates a new pull request. The notification system supports Slack, email and custom webhooks.
The notifications can be summarized in non-technical language or only include the most important information. Of course, the assistant can translate them into many languages so that a pull request description written in English can be summarized for team members who speak a different language.
This FAQs summarizes it all!
It's not open source but they provide a good enough free tier.
6. Litlyx - One line code Analytics with AI.
Litlyx is a single-line code analytics solution that integrates with every JavaScript/TypeScript framework.
A simple analytics solution for developers but they use a wrapper of GPT that users can query about the data collected with litlyx.
For instance, you can simply ask How many visits did I have 7 days ago?, How many visits I had last week?, how many custom events were triggered with this name or name of the event and so on.
I believe they are planning to generate charts and reports with it in the future.
It tracks 10+ KPIs and as many custom events as you want for your app. Enjoy AI-powered dashboards for intuitive data insights, automatic reports sent straight to your email, and seamless CSV file downloads to work on your data.
You can install it using npm or CDN. The total lib size is less than 4kb so that's a plus point.
It supports 15+ frameworks as shown below.
Read the docs and check the live demo.
Litlyx has 215 stars on GitHub and is built using Vue + TypeScript.
7. Codeium - free AI-powered toolkit for developers.
Codeium is considered the most intelligent AI code generation tool out there and has more than 1.25M VSCode downloads.
They have divided all the stuff into four categories. Let's explore in brief what they do!
✅ Codeium Autocomplete.
⚡ It creates multiple high-quality suggestions with incredibly low latencies so that you can just “tab-complete” forward.
✅ Codeium Command.
⚡ Direct the AI to generate or edit code directly in the editor. Just open the command prompt (Ctrl + I or ⌘ + I), enter a command, and watch the Codeium code for you!
✅ Codeium Chat.
⚡ Your new AI-powered coding assistant that can write you code and answer your questions. It can generate, explain, refactor and translate your code!
Watch it in action!
✅ Context Aware Everything.
⚡ Codeium's Context Engine generates better suggestions than any other AI dev tool
⚡ You can see exactly what part of your code our Chat AI used as context to generate the response to your query.
It's available for all the major languages and IDEs.
You can check the online playground to test it in your browser.
They have also provided a detailed comparison considering the price, features, latency, and quality analysis between Github Copilot, Tabnine, Replit Ghostwriter and Codeium.
It's not open source (repo is available only for Vim) but they provide a free forever tier.
8. CodeAI - Innovate at Light Speed.
You can elevate your coding to the next level within 30 seconds, at least that is what they claim to do!
CodeAI is the ultimate sidekick for pioneers for developers. While traditional tools lag, CodeAI is the relentless powerhouse that transforms your what ifs into what is.
Some of the decent features are:
⚡ Easily add code snippets to CodeAI for instant suggestions and improvements. The interactive chat feature allows you to get real-time feedback.
⚡ Never worry about writing commit messages again. CodeAI automatically generates clean, formatted commit messages based on your git diffs, following best practices and ensuring your commit history is always clear and descriptive.
⚡ CodeAI can generate and update changelogs with commit hashes included for easy reference. New entries are seamlessly appended to existing changelogs, maintaining the structure and style for consistency.
These FAQs will answer all your generic doubts!
You can read how to get started with CodeAI or you can download it from VSCode marketplace.
Code AI is not open source but provides a free tier with a limit of 100 calls per month.
9. Perplexica - AI-powered search engine.
You would have heard about Perplexity AI somewhere along your journey, Perplexica is an open source alternative to that!
Perplexica is an AI-powered search tool or an AI-powered search engine that goes deep into the internet to find answers. It not only searches the web but also understands your questions.
It uses advanced machine learning algorithms like similarity searching and embeddings to refine results and provides clear answers with sources cited.
Using SearxNG to stay current and fully open source, Perplexica ensures you always get the most up-to-date information without compromising your privacy.
If you're wondering about the architecture, you can read about the key components.
I also recommend reading the more detailed explanation of how these components work together. They've explained it clearly by taking an example of a scenario where a user asks: How does an A.C. work?.
Some of the features are:
⚡ Some search tools might give you outdated info because they use data from crawling bots convert them into embeddings and store them in an index. Unlike them, Perplexica uses SearxNG, a metasearch engine to get the results and rerank and get the most relevant source out of it, ensuring you always get the latest information without the overhead of daily data updates.
⚡ You can make use of local LLMs such as Llama3 and Mixtral using Ollama.
⚡ It has a copilot mode to search instead of just using the context by SearxNG, it visits the top matches and tries to find relevant sources to the user's query directly from the page.
⚡ Perplexica currently has 6 focus modes:
- YouTube Search Mode.
- Wolfram Alpha Search Mode.
- Reddit Search Mode.
- Academic Search Mode.
- Writing Assistant Mode.
- All Mode (searches the entire web).
You can watch the complete walkthrough on YouTube!
They have 11k+ stars on GitHub and are on the v1.8 release.
10. Grit - query language for searching, linting, and modifying code.
Grit is a developer tool to put software maintenance on autopilot.
They automatically handle your dependency upgrades, large migrations, and code quality improvements.
GritQL (a part of them) is a query language designed for searching and modifying source code, with semantics similar to SQL or other declarative query languages. That repo is the source code for GritQL.
The best part is that you do not need to learn GritQL to use Grit.
New users should start with one of our many built-in migrations.
Some of the unique features are:
⚡ Improve developer velocity on maintenance.
⚡ Option of third party integrations.
⚡ Explore your codebase by writing powerful AST-aware queries to find and fix antipatterns in your codebase.
⚡ Migrations are a piece of cake.
You can read the docs.
Grit comes with a Visual Studio Code extension that provides easy integration of Grit into your editor. You will need to install the Grit CLI separately to use the extension.
GritQL has 2.8k stars on GitHub and is built on Rust.
11. Fireflies - Automate your meeting notes.
As a developer, I'm not fond of meetings but if you attend too many meetings then this is for you!
Fireflies help your team transcribe, summarize, search, and analyze voice conversations. Basically, automate your meeting notes!
Watch this quick demo!
They provide an insane amount of useful features:
⚡ Get automatic meeting notes, action items, & transcripts.
⚡ Find anything with AI-powered search.
⚡ Collaborate with your co-workers.
⚡ Automate workflows from meetings.
⚡ A real-time knowledge base for your entire team
Plus, you can capture & transcribe meetings in multiple ways.
There are a lot of features, but the AI ones are only included in premium plans.
The good thing is that their plans are affordable and they offer a free tier plan with 800mins/storage which is more than enough.
12. Continue - enable you to create an AI software development system.
Continue is one of the best AI code assistants I've seen in my developer journey.
You can connect any models and any context to build custom autocomplete and chat experiences inside VS Code and JetBrains.
You can easily set it up. Below are some of the snapshots while I was installing it.
After you've configured it, you're all set to use all the amazing concepts it provides.
They have a lot of awesome features such as:
Tab to autocomplete code suggestions.
Ask questions about your codebase.
Understand terminal errors immediately.
Kick off actions with slash commands.
Refactor functions where you are coding.
Read about all the features.
You will have to install the VSCode extension from the marketplace and then read the quickstart guide.
You can read the docs.
You can also watch this basic demo on YouTube!
They have 13k+ stars on GitHub and are built using TypeScript.
13. Raycast - Take shortcuts, not detours.
A Mac app that serves as a customizable, extensible productivity launcher and automation tool. It provides quick access to tools, commands, and workflows to boost productivity.
You can browse a lot of extensions provided by the community on their official store.
Let's see what Raycast can do:
⚡ Automate the things you do all the time.
⚡ Quick AI combines the power of AI with the web to answer any question.
⚡ Create your own AI Commands to automate repetitive tasks and eliminate chores.
⚡ It can do a whole lot of awesome stuff like taking notes, tracking your flights, converting anything, searching files, running scripts, managing your windows, planning your day, reminding you of stuff, translating into any language, inserting Emojis, and even finding text in screenshots.
You can read on how to get started.
You can also read their API docs if you're planning to build something awesome and also see open source examples apps.
Trust me, I would love to use it but unfortunately, I don't use Mac.
The whole code is not open source but only the script commands, developer extension (API), and some of their tools.
14. Gitinfluence - AI tool to find the right git command.
As you know, it's tough to learn every git command. It gets complex if the use cases are complex.
That is why Gitinfluence is the AI-driven solution that helps you quickly find the right command. You can save a huge time thanks to this awesome tool.
For instance, this is the response I got after typing what I needed.
It's as simple as it sounds and very efficient.
It is a very early open source project (next.js) with 79 stars but I'm sure it has a lot of potential to grow.
15. Codium AI - Quality-first AI code generation to help busy devs write, test and review code.
CodiumAI is a developer tool that uses AI to generate meaningful tests for code. CodiumAI analyzes your code, docstring, and comments, and then suggests tests as you code. You don’t have to spend hours!
Watch the complete demo of Codium AI in under 1 minute!
You can download it from VSCode Marketplace and JetBrains extension.
You definitely have heard about a PR agent that assists you in reviewing PRs, that with other tools and Codiumate are products by the same company.
You can also see the difference between CodiumAI vs ChatGPT for generating unit-tests.
I recommend checking out docs to find comprehensive guides and details to harness the full potential of CodiumAI.
They offer a lot more, so check their website for the detailed features along with all of the things that you can do!
CodiumAI is completely open source with all of its tools.
16. Mintlify - Documentation that just appears as you build.
We (as developers) understand the importance of documentation within our code. But it's a lengthy process and most of the time it's a big hassle to begin with.
That is where Mintlify as an AI documentation writer can help you to document the code in just 1 second. Exciting right :)
You can watch this video for the complete walkthrough!
As you can see, you just have to highlight the code or place the cursor on the line you want to document. Then click on the Write Docs button (or hit ⌘ + .)
It supports more than 10 major programming languages and supports a lot of docstring formats like JSDoc, reST, NumPy and more.
It's very simple and it will automatically document the code whenever you write code so it's easier for others to understand it.
You can install the VSCode extension or install it on IntelliJ. You can also read the security guidelines.
By the way, their website link is writer.mintlify.com, I'm not sure but the current one in the repo seems to be wrong.
Mintlify is a very handy tool for documenting your code which is something every developer needs to do. It has huge benefits when you're maintaining any large codebase.
Mintlify has 2.7k stars on GitHub and is built on TypeScript.
17. Unblocked - finding and keeping developers updated in the easiest way.
Unblocked is considered one of the best ways to talk to your codebase.
It gives developers fast and helpful answers to questions specific to their codebase. You can think of Unblocked as a virtual member of your team that can answer any question about any part of your codebase.
Let's explore some of the use cases:
⚡ Some developers prefer to minimize their context switching while writing code. To that end, you can ask Unblocked questions directly from both Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ.
⚡ Unblocked IDE extensions extend the code editor gutter and add a small icon to indicate the presence of a conversation from a merged pull request beside its related line (or range) of code.
⚡ Unblocked surfaces contextually relevant documents and past discussions for any open file, so you have the same knowledge as the teammates who wrote the code.
⚡ It's safe to say that Unblocked helps you to swap 30 minute meetings for 3 second answers.
You can read the docs and follow the quickstart guide.
Check out the demo video for complete walkthrough.
They offer a free version and are not open source.
I was researching many other tools so these are some of those that didn't make the list (might not be free and open source):
- Adrenaline - Visualize any codebase with AI.
- Tabnine - AI code assistant (free for only 3 months).
- Cursor - AI Code Editor.
- Krisp - AI-powered assistant for meetings.
- Duckly - Multiplayer coding (free tier is not very good).
- Pieces - Your workflow copilot.
- Cody - AI coding assistant that uses your codebase as context (open source).
I know it's very long, but this also provides 5x value at the same time :)
I hope you enjoyed reading this. Let me know if you know of any other good AI tools for developers.
Have a great day! Till next time.
You can join my community for developers and tech writers at dub.sh/opensouls.
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