Agent beats chat for coding
A coding agent reads the tree, runs tests, and writes patches. Chat with a 1M window still needs you to paste context. That is why “best AI coder” in 2026 is usually an agent plus a model, not a model alone.
How the four we list split the market
Claude Code is Anthropic’s CLI. Cursor Composer is the IDE-native loop. Cline is the VS Code / JetBrains open agent that can ride cheap APIs. Trae is ByteDance’s IDE with a free-tier path that matters for Chinese teams. Pick the surface you already live in, then pick the model.