ymmv, but I think all of this is too much and you generally don't need to think about how to use an AI properly since screaming at it usually works just as well as very fine tuned instructions.
you don't need claude code, gemini-cli or codex I've been doing it raw as a (recent) lazyvim user with a proprietary agent with 3 tools: git, ask and ripgrep and currently gemini 3 is by far the best for me even without all these tricks.
gemini 3 has a very high token density and a significantly larger context than any model that is actually usable, every 'agent' I start shoves 5 things into the context:
- most basic instructions such as: generate git format diff only when editing files and use the git tool to merge it (simplified, it's more structured and deeper than this)
- tree command that respects git ignore
- $(ask "summarize $(git diff)")
- $(ask "compact the readme $(cat README.MD"))
- (ripgrep tools, mcp details, etc)
when the context is too bloated I just tell it to write important new details to README.MD and then start a new agent
I'm doing something very similar but even simpler and Gemini 3 is absolutely crushing it. I tried to do this with other models in the past, but it never really felt productive.
I don't even generate diffs, just full files (though I try and keep them small) and my success rate is probably close to 80% one-shotting very complex coding tasks that would take me days.