Which AI Tools Do I Actually Use for Development?

A former teammate from Amazon recently asked me this. I figured the answer might be useful to more than just him.

My Setup

Two tools. Both inside VS Code.

• Claude Code CLI (+ the VS Code extension, which mirrors it) — for everything general-purpose
• Snowflake Cortex Code (CoCo) CLI — for anything Snowflake-related

That's it. No Copilot. No Cursor. Two CLIs, one editor.

"But What About AWS Kiro?"

That's what my former teammate at Amazon uses. It's solid — but there's a trade-off worth knowing about.

The latest Anthropic models Kiro and CoCo use is 4.5, which is one generation behind the latest frontier model you get through Claude Code directly.

To be fair, Kiro offsets this with deep AWS-specific capabilities — CDK scaffolding, Lambda, CloudFormation — plus some genuinely clever features like spec-driven development and automation hooks. If you're building on AWS, Kiro earns its keep.

But for my work, CoCo is the one that punches above its weight.

Why CoCo Punches Above Its Weight

CoCo ships with deep, Snowflake-specific skills — Cortex functions, Snowpark, Streamlit in Snowflake, Native Apps, dbt, Airflow and more. These aren't generic code completions. They're purpose-built capabilities that understand Snowflake's ecosystem from the inside out.

That more than compensates for being one model generation behind.

And here's the thing most people miss: CoCo isn't only good at Snowflake. It's built on Claude. So for general development work — Python, SQL, debugging, refactoring — it's highly capable across the board.

If your IT policies won't let you use Claude Code but your org is on Snowflake, consider yourself lucky. You get most of what Claude Code offers, plus a toolbox of Snowflake-native skills you won't find anywhere else. Oh, and you only pay for what you use.

The Pricing Angle

Another CoCo benefit — and something I love about Snowflake generally — is pay-as-you-go pricing.

I'm on the Claude Code $100/month plan. I can count on one hand the number of times I've hit rate limits. That means I'm consistently overpaying for capacity I don't use.

With CoCo, you pay for what you consume. For most developers (and their employers), that math is going to work out significantly better.

Beyond Code

These are my developer tools. But AI has changed how I work beyond code too — especially how I write. In short, I rely heavily on Claude Cowork.

I wrote about a use case of that separately: AI Didn't Replace My Creativity — It Unlocked It