Ask HN: Are tab completion models dead?

I'm craving something similar, but a smidge more than tab-completion. I'd like to treat the agent as an ephemeral pair programmer. Give the editor some keybind to mark and comment places in the code, and then I edit a prompt telling it what focused changes to make where I've marked. After a round of changes is good and complete, the next batch starts with a fresh context and no memory of the previous one. Aider in watching mode is almost this, but I'd have to insert and save actual "AI:" comments for it to replace. It wouldn't surprise me if VS Code already has something like I'm thinking, but VS Code is painful to me in so many other ways I refuse to use it. I should probably just vibe code a vim or emacs extension for exactly what I want, but I haven't yet.

I still want it for small edits. When I'm renaming a field or filling in a match arm, opening an agent is slower than hitting tab. I'd use agents for any changes that require entire codebase exploration and changing multiple files, and perfer completion for the 2 line change to my portfolio website update for example.

I still want it for small edits. When I'm renaming a field or filling in a match arm, opening an agent is slower than hitting tab. I use agents for anything that required codebase exploration and changes across multiple files , and prefer completion for changing 2 lines in my portfolio website for example.

Much like other uses of LLM, it never worked right, and everyone went back to the original, working, way of doing it. You do not, and never did, need AI for tab complete.

I disabled tab completion. When I open a file in an IDE, it is because I don’t want an AI edit; I’m fixing the confusing documentation, or changing a configuration, or making a small edit to the code. I do code changes through the agent, because it is more accurate and thorough. I don’t think that I would use tab completions again. I bet that there will be some innovation in how code is visualized, though.