AI Coding Tools Compared: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Cursor, Lovable and AI Agents
AI Coding Tools Compared: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Cursor, Lovable and AI Agents
Watch the recording
Full workshop video with timestamps and downloadable materials.
Follow the tutorial
10 pages of step-by-step instructions you can work through at your own pace.
We compare AI coding tools by asking them to help build the same small app: Snake in React. The session is a comparison, not a single production build, so the walkthrough follows the tool categories: chat applications, coding assistants and IDEs, project bootstrappers, and agents.
Links
The main resources:
- Workshop recording
- Workshop code repository
- Lovable Snake preview
- AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp
- AI Engineering Buildcamp
- RAG agents workshop
- LLM Zoomcamp
The comparison
The same app appears in several workflows:
The workshop code includes two Vite React projects. snake-chatgpt keeps
the game in one component and is useful for seeing what a chat app can
produce from a short prompt. snake-claude-code splits the page shell from
the game component, adds score, start and restart flow, WASD controls, and
a walls versus pass-through mode.
Walkthrough
Follow the numbered files in order. Each one stands on its own, but the sequence matches the live workshop flow.
- Overview and setup - setup, example code, links, and the comparison map.
- Part 1: Chat apps - use chat apps such as ChatGPT and Claude to generate the first Snake implementation, then run the resulting Vite React app locally.
- Part 1 continued: ChatGPT Snake code - look at the
snake-chatgptimplementation in detail. - Part 2: Coding assistants and IDEs - compare Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Pear as tools that work inside a project.
- Part 2 continued: Claude Code Snake app - look at the richer
snake-claude-codeimplementation. - Part 3: Project bootstrappers - compare app bootstrappers such as Bolt and Lovable, including the hosted Lovable preview and export-to-GitHub flow.
- Part 4: Agents and computer use - connect the previous tools to the agent pattern and run Anthropic's computer use demo container.
- Deferred items - items that are worth trying after the workshop.
- Appendix: file inventory - file inventory, dependency details, and command quick reference.
- Q&A - side questions about Claude project download, Lovable with an existing repo, the score bug, and the agent follow-up path.