I love Claude Code too, and it definitely has it's place. I think that IDE's have a few advantages over CLI tools though. In specific the IDE has a lot more contextual information such as what files you have open, warnings from linters or type checkers, information from LSP, etc.

I think it is entirely possible to build a fantastic CLI tool for coding, and the CLI tools for coding already work well enough, but there is just more context info available inside of an IDE, therefore the ceiling is higher when working with an agent that runs inside of the IDE. Context is king for LLM results, and IDE's just have more context.

Over time I'm sure we'll see tools like Claude Code support everything that an IDE can do, but for now if you want to reach the same ceiling you still have to glue together a very custom setup with MCP tool use, and that has the downside of introducing additional tool use latency, compared to an IDE that is able to source context directly from the IDE's internal API, and provide that to the LLM nearly instantly.

I use claude code in vscode. Cmd-Esc opens a claude code tab. Then /ide conects to the vscode and it's all like cursor at that point.

Same here - in fact, I just recently cancelled my Cursor subscription because Claude Code + VSCode seems just as good. I think Cursor is a decent product and some of the UX it puts around LLM interaction is helpful - but I just can't really justifying paying Cursor to middleman my requests to LLM providers when Claude Pro is $20 / month.