AI Online IDEs Guidance

The AI is not only for extensions and local IDEs like VSCode, Cursor, etc. Online editors also incorporate it to shorten the distance between ideas and deployment.

In this article, we will see some of the most interesting ones, such as Bolt, v0, Replit, etc. But first, what the heck is an online editor, and what are the advantages compared to a local editor?

Online

For years, almost anything could be done online, and code editors were not going to be less. But why use an online editor?

Editors

There are several reasons why online editors are interesting:

Portability: You can access your code from anywhere with an internet connection.
Immediate: It is not necessary to install anything, which is ideal for testing emerging technologies.
Collaboration: Allows simple real-time editing with other developers.
Deployment: They are usually integrated or sponsored by cloud platforms, which simplifies the deployment.

Of course, they also have some disadvantages:

Privacy: Your code is in the cloud if that concerns you.
Speed: You cannot take advantage of the capabilities of a good local computer if you have one.
Cost: Even though they have a free plan or are very accessible, it ends up not being free if you use it a lot.

Agents

Given the existence of this type of editor, it was almost inevitable that they would add agents with artificial intelligence to speed up development.

Since they are responsible for configuring the environment and deployment, these agents go much further than coding assistants.

And this is their great advantage: they shorten the distance between idea and result.

1. 🥇 Bolt

My first recommendation because it is the one that has worked best for me. It is based on StackBlitz, which I already loved as an online editor, and raises the bet with a fairly intelligent integration of AI.

Starting is free, create an account on Bolt and you can create a new project. They offer many pre-configured templates to choose from: Angular, Astro, Next, React, Svelte, Vite, Next, etc. But you can also create one blank.

From there, you have an integrated chat where you can ask it to generate the functionality you need. Similar to Cursor, or Windsurf but with the advantage of a real-time execution integrated in the browser.

From there, you can continue with a local experience, downloading or taking the project to GitHub. However, the most interesting thing about these cases is the automatic deployment to the cloud, in this case with Netlify.

A first-class AI experience without polluting your computer and with automatic deployment.

2. 🥈 v0

The response of Vercel to Netlify is v0, an online editor super-specialized in web applications.

It is, by far, the one that generates the best interfaces, since it is optimized to work with React, Shadcn and Tailwind. Even supports designs from Figma to import and generate the code.

Its own name, version zero, is a clear example of the promise it makes. Having a ready-made application mockup in seconds. The AI agent experience is quite good, and of course the deployment is automatic to Vercel.

The best interface generator in seconds.

3. 🥉 Replit

Replit is the excellent online editor, and it is not surprising that it has also been animated to add a fairly powerful AI. The main advantage is its ability to work with almost any programming language.

It also stands out for having a huge community and, therefore, having many templates from which to choose.

Among its disadvantages, perhaps it has a slightly more confusing interface or that feels outdated. And the fact that its free plan is quite limited.

A reliable all-terrain for advanced uses and specific languages or frameworks.

Others

Other interesting projects, but that I have not been able to test in depth, are those proposed by two companies that you may have heard of: Microsoft and Google.

Their two proposals are:

GitHub Spark: I am still on the waitlist, so I can only imagine a Copilot with Azure cloud deployment.
Google IDX: I assume it will use Gemini as the engine, but I have not been able to test it.

Conclusion

The AI in online editors is a field that is moving quickly, and it is very likely that in a couple of years AI in the editor will be something normal. Especially if we need more and more capacity on our computers to work, or even if we work in more and more changing environments.

All these tools, along with the good practices proposed by AI-driven development, will allow us to work more intelligently and productively.