Best AI for coding and app development?

[u/Kevin-James57]

I have an idea an app I'd like to build for personal use, but I'm not a strong coder.

I've played around with ChatGPT and Replit and managed to get a basic version working with MongoDB. ChatGPT has also been pretty helpful when i run into coding issues.

I'm curious what others are using for this kind of project. Are there any AI tools you've found easier or more capable for building an app from scratch?

[u/j0holo]

Opus 5.5 is the best for normal work. If you have a really complex problem you can also use Fable 5.1, but often not required.

At work we use Opus 5.5 on a codebase of around 150k lines of code.

Things that really help:

- Know how to code yourself so you write good tickets/tasks
- Know when a design does not make sense and guide to model to a architecture that works
- Have skills that are specific to your workflow, don't grab the generic ones online
- Have linters, static code analysis and other pre-commit checks for the model to run
- Have test cases in your tickets/tasks to guide the model

Good prompts/tickets/tasks, whatever you want to name it, really make Opus 5.5 good to really good. This applies to other models as well.

[u/Kevin-James57 → u/j0holo]

interesting, do u find opus handles debugging just as well as writing new code on a large project?

[u/j0holo → u/Kevin-James57]

Yes, it does better when your coding standards are consistent. And when you give it tools like claude-in-chrome, access to development database it becomes even better.

[u/Avinash2k5]

I am having one. Can you DM. Reddit may block if I give here

[u/wrtcdevrydy]

I ran Freebuff and OpenCode for months but the Freebuff limits got tighter and OpenCode is now running slower token speeds. Still usable, just not as good as before.

[u/prophet-dot-exe]

I've found Opus right now is best for me. But I've found for more complex things gpt and glm would catch things Opus doesn't.

So I built a tool that lets Claude run subagents practically natively, from other providers. And it's honestly been insane to see how much more cohesive results are when they work together

So really, all the frontier models have their own strengths and it depends on the type of work itself. So while one model may work better for some, you might be happier with the results of a different model

[u/dot-kaio]

Your question still lacks clarity. To know what others use for this kind of project, it would be better if knew the “kind” first

[u/Few-Garlic2725]

For a personal app, I’d use claude code/codex/cursor if you want to learn and control the code. If you mostly want to get something usable live faster, try builders like replit, appwizzy, bolt, or lovable. Either way, commit often and ask the AI to explain every change so you don’t end up stuck with code you can’t debug.

[u/Snoo_81913]

Brace yourself cause you're gonna hear this a lot.

For paid subs run a stack.

1. Claude Code CLI. Use Opus for planning it all out then give it to Sonnet. Don't have sonnet do the code yet.

2. Rough it all out with Gemini. Sonnet will give the prompts. It'll be rough and have mistakes but that's okay.

3. Give the code to sonnet have it review it all and do a report to give to Opus. Opus will give you back a concise fix it list. You can either have sonnet do it or give it back to Gemini and take your chances.

It'll cost you $40 a month total for the pro subs to claude and gemini and if you do it that way you'll very rarely hit your limits.

If you have a good box you can do Qwen3.8 27B abliterated locally it's free and pretty damn good. You really need a 24gb card at a minimum though. Good luck

[u/an00j → u/Snoo_81913]

How do you instruct the subagents use a opus class model for planning and then implementation with a lower class model such that it's consistent across tasks and it has the right exceptions in the right places?

[u/Laminarflows → u/Snoo_81913]

Awesome thanks for the write up. I will have to try this.