Phase 0: The AI-Native Engineering Mindset · 40 min · Claude Code · Cursor · Cline
The Tool Landscape: Durable Categories, Not Brands
New tools launch every month. The categories they fall into change every few years.
What you will learn
- Name the four durable categories of AI coding tools: terminal agents, IDE-native tools, browser app-builders, cloud agents
- Explain why a category-first mental model survives tool churn better than memorizing specific products
- Apply a repeatable 10-minute checklist to evaluate any new tool announcement
- Match a category to a given engineering task based on autonomy, environment, and blast-radius needs
Introduction
The Tool Landscape: Durable Categories, Not Brands
Objective
Build a scoring tool that classifies any AI coding tool into one of four durable categories and evaluates it against the 10-minute checklist (execution environment, autonomy level, blast radius, context model, cost model).
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You've read the first 2 sections. The rest of this lesson covers The Problem, The Concept, Build, Check Yourself, Key Terms & Next — plus a hands-on lab, quiz, and project artifact.
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