VS Code

The free editor that hosts everything else — terminal, git, and whichever coding agent you've chosen.

Pick this when

Always, as the substrate. It's the trainer's daily editor precisely because it's free and neutral.

What makes it different

Free, and the default host for Claude Code in the course's local stack

Integrated terminal is where git clone and the whole local workflow happen

Edits code, runs an integrated terminal, handles git

Hosts coding agents as extensions or in its terminal

Opens a cloned repo — the concrete step after Lovable pushes to GitHub

Common wrong expectations

Doesn't do anything agentic on its own — it's the room, not the worker

The base layer of the local stack; everything in BC2's post-MVP workflow happens inside it.

Shelf

Coding agents & editors · Productivity & source apps

Our status · using

Standard editor for the pipeline's Python and YAML.

For your projects

Where build_site.py gets read when a sitting isn't driving it through an agent.

Freshness

current

claude-code: the trainer runs Claude Code inside VS Code

github: clone, commit, push

Session	Coverage	Moment	What happened
Basecamp 2: Vibe Coding	demonstrated	2:13:16	Terminal, git clone, opening the cloned project; trainer's daily editor (free) with Claude Code inside
Session 11: Overview of Claude Code & Key Concepts (Installs, Modes, Context Files, Skills, Hooks & MCPs)	demonstrated	0:18:42	Installed and toured as the visual home; integrated terminal runs the same CLI
Session 12: Claude Code — Design & Building Agents (App-First: a Game, a GTM Board, and a Live Deploy)	demonstrated	0:35:23	File viewer only — 'just to view the files'
AI Sprint: Windsurf & Devin — Day 1 (Vibe to Agentic: GitHub as Pizza, the Four Spec Concerns, and the IDE Lineage)	explained		The open-source ancestor of the entire agentic-IDE family
Session 16: GitHub 101 — Fundamentals & Essentials	mentioned	2:18:32	'A nerdy way of looking into Git stacks and graphs — you don't have to worry about it at this point'
AI Sprint: Claude Code with Antigravity — Day 1 (Taste as the Moat, the Muscle-and-Mirror Setup, and the Model Council Build)	mentioned		The common substrate: 'whether cursor, Windsurf, Kiro — same extensions, same setup'
AI Sprint: Windsurf & Devin — Day 2 (Building Superplexity: Plan with Opus, Execute with Cascade, Review with Devin)	mentioned		The extension compatibility that lets Claude Code live inside Windsurf