I just finished the day’s work feeling really satisfied. I was coding something new, and it came out beautifully. I think a big reason for that was having all my instructions and guiding documents right there in my project folder. That’s one of the reasons I like working through an IDE.
What I Did
Today’s work session felt calm and peaceful. No drama. The agents already knew what I wanted to do, so they could execute without me having to keep nagging or repeating myself.
They knew my preferences, rules, instructions, when to stop, what to do next, the processes and flows I wanted to follow, and what to avoid. Because all of that context was already there, the whole experience felt much smoother.
Challenges
This felt very different from just a week ago, when I was exploring an MCP connection for Meta ads. I got really frustrated because Claude told me something that turned out not to be verified. It initially presented the answer like a fact, but when I questioned it, it backtracked and admitted that it had not actually checked and that it was only a hypothesis.
For that use case, I didn’t use an IDE to create my agentic flows. I was exploring Claude and Claude connectors because a lot of people are using Claude chat directly in its web UI, so I wanted to ‘see what the fuss was about’ and become more familiar with that way of working.
After running into that problem, I found some suggested solutions and would be trying Claude Projects to prevent this from happening. In Claude Projects, you can upload instruction files to help guide the chats inside that project, which might be more familiar to me as I’m used to the IDE workflow.
When I looked at the Claude Projects interface and what I could upload, though, it felt quite limited compared with what I’m already used to in an IDE. :/
Maybe that’s because when I first started with software development, I was already using an IDE. I’m very comfortable with that kind of workflow now, and I think I’ve been a little spoilt by how customisable it is. In an IDE, you can shape almost everything around a project. With the web UI of Claude or GPT, you’re still limited by whatever settings and controls the product gives you.
So if you want a highly customised, drama-free setup, I would suggest trying an IDE. At the same time, I completely understand that for someone who has never coded or worked with software development, an IDE can feel pretty intimidating. And it can take more time and work for you to setup your project there.
What Comes Next
I’m still going to explore Claude Projects and see whether I can make my agent more intelligent when it comes to Meta ads analysis and creating campaigns.
Stay tuned. I’ll be sharing what I learn.