"I'd argue that seemingly minor UX differences between different coding agents end up having a massive impact on how users spend their "thinking budget." With a remote-first product like Codex Cloud (not the CLI), the product encourages you not to spend time thinking while the agent is working and spend more time thinking about the end result that the agent gave."
"With an IDE-focused product like Cursor, you accept most diffs as they come in. Your thinking window is relatively short because you are accepting code (or not). You need to do relatively little thinking to supply the right context, because it's already in your editor. The trade-off is that you have probably broken down the problem ahead of time. You need to spend more time coming up with the plan/approach yourself."
Human oversight remains necessary: someone must set goals, choose constraints, and judge outputs when using coding agents. Small UX differences between coding agents substantially change how users allocate their thinking budget. Remote-first tools like Codex Cloud encourage deferring thought while the agent runs and focusing on the final output. Interactive CLI-style agents encourage real-time thinking about specs and high-level approach while following the agent’s chain of thought, but often require separate diff review. IDE-focused tools like Cursor produce short thinking windows, require prior problem breakdown, and shift more effort to upfront planning. Active thinking cycles include supplying context, planning, implementing, and verifying. LLMs are currently strongest at implementation.
Read at Calv
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]