The last couple years, though, something’s changed. It’s subtle. Feels like most new tools aren’t just “smart editors” anymore. They respond. They suggest. Sometimes they even explain.

They’re not IDEs. They’re… something else.

Been calling them AIDEs lately — Artificial Intelligence Development Environments.

Not saying it’ll stick. But it feels different: • Cursor doesn’t feel like a VS Code extension. It feels like a teammate. • Ghostwriter doesn’t just autocomplete — it knows what I’m asking before I do. • I’ve seen junior devs build shippable codebases without ever typing if.

I’m wondering if this is just a fancy wrapper around LLMs, or the beginning of a proper shift — where “development environment” means co-author, not just color-coded text.

Anyone else feeling this? Do we need a new term for what’s emerging?