Yet another AI tool
Building an AI tool? You’re not the only one.
Start by looking sideways. Who else is already in the same space? A user won’t juggle Cline, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Replit, and Copilot all at once. They may trial a few, but then will pick one.
(Same story with my ChatGPT, Google Suite, Notion, and browser — each trying to be my “agent.” I don’t need four for cross-app delegation. One would do.)
It may be better if your tool complements and not competes. Even then the user still has to fit it into their workflow1.
And workflows are sticky. People want to get back to their usual environment, no matter how slick your UI is.
If your tool doesn’t need a UI, lean on MCP so others can call it, or just stick to text. Some AIs directly leave comments into your workspace (i.e. IDE, editor, markdown files) to be picked up by the users, or another AI. It’s low-friction and right where the user is.
That’s why AI agents are a struggle for senior dev who have optimal flows and agents have multiple non-obvious ways of using them.