Desktop Tools

🛠️ What are Developer Tools?

These are programs that help people write code and build software. Don't worry if you're not a programmer—some of these tools can help you learn to code or even build simple apps without coding experience.

Think of them like specialized word processors for writing computer programs, except now many have AI built in to help you along the way.

Auth

Authentication for websites and apps. Add login with minimal code.

Browser AI

AI assistants and chat built into web browsers. Privacy-focused, contextual, no account required for many.

Computer automation (agents)

These systems run personal AI agents that can operate apps, shells, and browsers on your behalf. OpenClaw is the de facto pioneer: a full-featured, self-hosted stack where real UI control often goes through Playwright (Chromium automation — clicks, navigation, screenshots). Newer “claw” projects fork, slim down, or reimplement that idea for edge devices, Zig, Go, or hosted wrappers.

For agent integrations, Microsoft’s Playwright MCP exposes the same class of browser tools over MCP; the core library lives at playwright.dev.

Browser Tools

CLI

CLI = Command Line Interface. These are tools you use by typing commands (like in the movies when hackers type on black screens). They're powerful but take some learning. The AI-powered ones can actually understand what you want and help you.

Aider AI pair programming in the terminal; edit files in your repo, 75+ LLM providers, Git integration, voice-to-code → Augment CLI AI-powered coding in the terminal; same Context Engine as IDE; #1 on SWE-Bench Pro → Amp CLI Frontier terminal agent (Sourcegraph); smart / rush / deep modes, subagents, MCP; connects to VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, JetBrains, Neovim — curl -fsSL https://ampcode.com/install.sh | bash → Claude Code Anthropic’s agentic CLI; multi-tool orchestration, MCP, permission modes, Docker sandboxing → Cline CLI Run tasks headlessly; power GitHub Actions, Discord bots, game characters, Linear tickets. npm install -g cline → CLIProxyAPI Run coding CLIs against your Claude / Codex / Gemini / Qwen logins; local OpenAI-shaped proxy → Crush Charm: agentic CLI; multi-model, LSP, MCP, sessions → Fresh Terminal text editor with GUI habits: Ctrl+S / undo / find, mouse & selections, menus, command palette, graphical settings, LSP; huge files (10GB+), low latency — also github.com/sinelaw/fresh → Gemini CLI Google’s open-source CLI agent; build, debug & deploy with AI from the terminal; MCP, 1M token context → Gemini CLI GitHub Source repo; 94k+ stars, Apache 2.0; contribute, issues, roadmap, docs → Goose Block: open-source local agent & desktop; MCP extensions, many model providers, shell & repo automation — Apache 2.0 → Junie CLI JetBrains: LLM-agnostic coding agent in the terminal, CI/CD, GitHub/GitLab (beta); BYOK — same stack as Junie in IDEs → Kimi Code CLI Moonshot AI: terminal agent; read/edit code, shell, MCP, ACP → Kilo Code All-in-one agentic engineering platform; VS Code, JetBrains, CLI; #1 on OpenRouter → Mistral Vibe Mistral’s open-source CLI coding assistant; skills, MCP → NemoClaw NVIDIA: sandboxed OpenClaw-style assistants in OpenShell; policy, egress control, Nemotron inference; alpha preview — see docs.nvidia.com/nemoclaw → OpenCode Open-source AI coding agent; terminal, desktop, IDE; 75+ LLM providers, LSP, multi-session → OpenAI Codex CLI OpenAI’s AI-assisted terminal with slash commands → OpenClaw Self-hosted personal AI agent; chat apps (Slack, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.), browser & shell tools, skills/plugins; openclaw onboard; MIT — repo: github.com/openclaw/openclaw → Open Interpreter Run LLMs in the terminal; execute code, browse, edit files; ChatGPT-like interface; pip install open-interpreter → Orbiton Config-free TUI editor/IDE (o); single binary, VT100-friendly; Markdown, commits, quick edits — github.com/xyproto/orbiton → Pi coding agent Minimal terminal coding harness (Mario Zechner); 15+ providers, tree sessions, TypeScript extensions & skills; npm install -g @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent — landing at shittycodingagent.ai → Qoder CLI Terminal-native agentic coding; fix, review, automate; <70ms startup, CI/CD → Qwen Code QwenLM: open-source terminal agent; OAuth free tier, IDE integration → Roo Code Open-source AI dev team; VS Code extension + Cloud agents; model-agnostic, role modes →

Codebase & research

Index, discover, and understand code repositories; AI-generated docs and search.

Coding Assistants

AI plugins and extensions for your existing IDE.

Coding plans

Subscription & API plans that plug into your existing IDE or CLI. Pay for model access (e.g. GLM-5) and use it in Cursor, Claude Code, Cline, Kilo Code, and more—one plan, many tools.

Debug & QA

Bug reporting and debugging tools that capture context automatically.

DevOps & containers

Game development

Browser based builder

Build and ship in the browser — no install: AI workspaces, autonomous engineers, and product builders that run in your tab (or a hosted cloud IDE).

IDE

IDE = Integrated Development Environment. Think of it as Microsoft Word, but for writing code instead of documents. These are full programs you install on your computer. Many now have AI assistants built in that can suggest code, fix errors, or even write entire functions for you.

Local LLM runtimes

Run open models on your machine or server; keep data local.

Reference

Terminal

Terminal emulators — where you run the CLI. GPU-accelerated for speed; native UI; cross-platform or macOS-only apps built for agentic workflows.

Tunneling

Expose your local server to the internet without DNS or firewall config.

Voice & speech-to-text

Web builders

🚀 Best for beginners! These let you build websites and apps just by describing what you want—no coding required. The AI writes the code for you. Everything runs in your browser, so there's nothing to install. Just sign up and start creating.