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Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

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Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#81

Post by aquariusDue »

benreesman wrote: post #67
cvdub wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using gptel exclusively, or also things like aider/claude code? I’d love to hear more about your workflow if you have time to share!

Sure. I'm experimenting like everyone else, but I mostly use gptel as the primary interaction surface and Claude Code for a range of refactorings and other "more than mechanical, less than creative" edits. Both of these are very (!!!) well complimented by magit, which is so good at AI supervision it seems designed for it, by a genius. For Claude Code I'm rapidly switching anything I want "vibe coded" into Hadkell for…

Sounds wild! What have you built this way?

Also as another Emacs user I'm wondering what lesser known packages or elisp snippets do you use? gptel, magit, tramp and org-mode are the usually touted killer features, but what else do you use in the Emacs ecosystem?

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#82

Post by celeritascelery »

neutronicus wrote: post #10

I've tried out a similar project (claude-code.el). I use Spacemacs in evil-mode and I found it very frustrating to try and type into the Claude Code text box (often my cursor would be somewhere weird, the terminal emulator just really did not seem to "understand" that I was not in Insert Mode). I wound up deciding that I'd rather just use Claude Code in the terminal. The Claude Code text box is ALSO annoying there, s…

I have also been using Claude-code.el and agree that the terminal emulators can struggle to integrate well with my regular workflow. What I have been doing is typing my prompt in the scratch buffer or minibuffer and then sending it to Claude with Claude-code-send-command (bound to s in the transient menu). I don’t even need to switch to the Claude code buffer to send it.

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#83

Post by szundi »

sexyman48 wrote: post #75
benreesman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not at anything like the adoption of MCP or especially LSP, and it takes a more "foundational and composable library of primitives" approach than "wire protocol per se" approach, but `gptel` has quite the vibrant little ecosystem around it and its just god mode, wall hacks on the VSCode stuff, just blows it away. I'm under extreme time pressure at the moment, I cannot afford to fuck around on ideology right now I…

cannot afford to fuck around, go for the jugular every day Slow your roll. Nothing you write will matter in six months.

[dead]

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#84

Post by kabdib »

sexyman48 wrote: post #75
benreesman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not at anything like the adoption of MCP or especially LSP, and it takes a more "foundational and composable library of primitives" approach than "wire protocol per se" approach, but `gptel` has quite the vibrant little ecosystem around it and its just god mode, wall hacks on the VSCode stuff, just blows it away. I'm under extreme time pressure at the moment, I cannot afford to fuck around on ideology right now I…

cannot afford to fuck around, go for the jugular every day Slow your roll. Nothing you write will matter in six months.

the code that i am least proud of is the code that has lasted the longest :-)

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#85

Post by lukaszkorecki »

mikece wrote: post #12
blahgeek wrote: post #9

Like LSP and tree-sitter, I think AI coding tools like Claude Code or Aider are very good news for niche editors like Emacs or Vim. Instead of struggling about implementing advanced IDE-like features, they can integrate with these tools relatively easily, and focus on other editing related features that set them apart. In fact, IMO it makes these editors more competitive because they are highly customizable and easie…

Is there a standard for integrating agentic coding tools into an editor similar to how an LSP allows the integration of language-specific features?

it's coming: https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#87

Post by mijoharas »

neutronicus wrote: post #10

I've tried out a similar project (claude-code.el). I use Spacemacs in evil-mode and I found it very frustrating to try and type into the Claude Code text box (often my cursor would be somewhere weird, the terminal emulator just really did not seem to "understand" that I was not in Insert Mode). I wound up deciding that I'd rather just use Claude Code in the terminal. The Claude Code text box is ALSO annoying there, s…

I think I basically had the same experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813189

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#88

Post by aquariusDue »

mikece wrote: post #11

I apologize for my ignorance in asking this question but is Emacs considered an IDE? I thought that was a term reserved for large, graphical editors like IntelliJ, Eclipse, or Visual Studio.

Well, I'd rather call it a PDE (Personal Development Environment)[0]. A term coined in the Neovim community that is pretty apt for Emacs too. Emacs can be pretty minimalist or maximalist depending on your preference, and it can be configured to have IDE-like features, though presented in a different way sometimes.

Honestly, the big barrier to entry for Emacs is finding the time to configure it to your liking. The best way is to use it along with your IDE and existing tooling, slowly integrating Emacs into your workflow piece by piece and tinkering with it when you have a bit of time but always with a goal in mind i.e. window (pane in modern vernacular) management, showing symbol documentation in a hoverbox, adding spell checking to comments or inline git blame.

And sure, there are lots of bits that you need to get used to at first, how copy and paste works out of the box without CUA-mode for one, but they're that big of a deal after a short while as some people make them out to be.

I'll say this though, Emacs is like tiling window management, you either love it and extol its virtues everywhere or you look at its proponents like aliens from another galaxy.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVIJhC9Veg

Re: Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs

#90

Post by Karrot_Kream »

I'm really glad that emacs is integrating modern tooling like LSP and tree-sitter, now Claude Code, but this approach is showing its age. I'm an emacs user of 20 years and honestly it's getting hard to configure everything these days. Claude Code before the IDE integration was actually the easiest thing to get working (since it just worked and then auto-revert-mode keeps my buffers in sync.)

I'm on a new MacOS install for $WORK trying to get lsp and ts work with a Typescript/Go repo and after some $PATH wonkiness (my default shell is not the same shell as the one that emacs launches in) got typescript-ls working but gopls is still having issues being downloaded. I haven't spent the hour or two it would probably take to figure out why the in-built downloader can't put gopls in the right place.

I'm curious what emacs users are doing these days. I'm using Zed right now and really enjoying it but it's really hard to give up 20 years of emacs and I do love how emacs can scale from small one-off config file editing to huge projects and I love how configurable it is.

Is neovim better in this space? Should I be learning how to debug elisp better to understand how the commands interact with my environment? I've been using emacs keybindings (in Dvorak at that) for so long I don't know if I'd enjoy the neovim editing experience.

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