AI Agent-Assisted Development

Pro Only

About AI Agents

AI agents are systems that can autonomously plan, execute, and iterate on multi-step software development tasks. If you haven't yet tried one yet, these are the important things to know:

This new technology changes the role of the software developer. Rather than writing code by hand or by manually invoking an AI for help, the developer operates as more of a software architect and manager of one or more intelligent agents that handle the bulk of implementation work. You define the goals, make design decisions, and review the agent's output before accepting it into your codebase. The AI agent takes care of all the details — reading and understanding existing code, writing new code, writing and running unit tests, debugging failures, and iterating until the task is done.

The advent of AI agents also changes what an IDE needs to do. Wing now provides tools not only to the human developer but also to the AI agents doing the work. Some of these tools reduce the cost and time of AI-assisted development — for example, by giving the agent efficient access to test results, debugger state, and code analysis without consuming excessive tokens. Other features help humans create and assign tasks to AI agents, and then review their work.

Wing's Claude Code Integration

Wing integrates with Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding agent, to provide AI-assisted development directly within the IDE. Claude Code is a terminal-based agent that can read and edit files, run commands, search code, and use Wing's testing, debugging, and code analysis tools through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Wing extends the core Claude Code capability by providing the human user with tools to manage planning, execution, and review of work for the AI agent.

With this integration, you can:

Requirements

Using Claude Code requires a subscription to Anthropic's Claude. Claude Code must be installed separately — see the Claude Code getting started guide for installation instructions and an introduction to working with Claude Code. Wing invokes the claude command when starting a Claude Code session.

Anthropic's free and low-cost subscription tiers are sufficient for evaluation; sustained day-to-day use will require the Max plan or comparable API spending.

For a step-by-step walkthrough of the workflow this chapter documents, see the AI agent track in the Tutorial.

Getting Started

To get started, use Set Up for Claude Code in the Project menu to configure your project for Claude Code. This writes the configuration files that Claude Code needs to connect to Wing's MCP servers. See Setting Up Claude Code for details.

Once set up, the Claude Code tool panel provides a full Claude Code terminal session. You can ask Claude Code questions, request code changes, and use it for complex multi-file development tasks. See The Claude Code Tool for details.

The Tasks tool lets you plan goals and tasks, queue them for execution, and run them sequentially through Claude Code instances. As tasks complete, you review their changes and track what was done. This is useful for preparing multiple work items in advance and having them run with automatic advancement. See The Tasks Tool for details.

Wing also provides quick access to AI agent-driven actions, including one-click fixes for failing tests, debugger exceptions, and code warnings, as well as code actions from the AI actions icon in the top right of the editor for explaining code, reviewing for quality or security risks, and making changes for optimization or documentation. See AI Actions for details.

Preferences and per-project permissions for AI agent behavior can be configured from the AI page in Preferences and the AI Agent tab in Project Properties. See Configuration for details and AI Agent Safety for a broader discussion of safety considerations when working with AI agents.

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