Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?

Simmania

Hi,

I want to start a big project using Qt with an QML based UI. I'm on my own and QML is new for me. Therefore I want to use AI to help me. Not to create the code. Not to take design decisions. Just to assist me. I should be able to ask how thinks can be done, advice me for possible solutions, help me solve bugs, etc.

I wonder what the best approach for this would be.

QtCreator with QT Assitance?
Not sure if QT Assistance is smart enough. I know it can do code completion and such. But if I understand correctly, it does not have knowledge of the whole project. So it can not help me project wise.
I think QT Assitance is not supported in the community version. But is it in the Small Business version?

VSCode with some AI tool (like CoPilot)?
Anybody experience with this? Can I use VSCode for QML based Qt applications? Is it wise to do so? Or should I use QtCreator at any time for an userfriendly programming experience?

Cursor?
Best tool for project wise help?
But does it support Qt?

TheoSys

@Simmania said in Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?:

Hi,

QtCreator with QT Assitance?

VSCode with some AI tool (like CoPilot)?
Anybody experience with this? Can I use VSCode for QML based Qt applications? Is it wise to do so? Or should I use QtCreator at any time for an userfriendly programming experience?

QtCreator supports CoPilot. There exists an extension called GitHub CoPilot. It can be used if you've enabled CoPilot on GitHub.

I Played a little around with it and the result was, for me, not very good. It makes a lot of suggestions and tries to guess what you want to do. Most of the time it's wrong. Only thing which worked more or less usable was the documentation of functions.

There is also an AI extension for ChatGPT in QtCreator. Tried this also and can say that it is a lot better. But the problem with all AI tools is that they don't think and don't understand. They just search for parts in their database which may fit best to the code you typed. This is often not what you want.

On the other side: If you command it to write small parts of code it can do a good job. I got the best results with ChatGPT-5. In any case it is necessary to review the code and to test it isolated before you add it to your project. At least this method helped me to get things done.

I program all with C++. Never tried with other languages, but colleges of mine said that they got the best results with Python. Fortunately you can use Qt with Python also.

A.T.

marktuan

I’d personally stick with Qt Creator for actual development/debugging and use an external AI tool alongside it. Qt Creator is still much better for Qt/QML projects than VSCode in my experience.

For AI assistance, Cursor works surprisingly well with Qt/QML projects because it can understand the whole codebase context much better than simple autocomplete tools. Copilot is useful too, but more for inline suggestions than architecture/debug discussions.

So my setup would probably be:

Qt Creator for building/debugging/designer
Cursor or ChatGPT for project-level assistance and QML learning

That gives you the best of both worlds.

Simmania

@marktuan

The thing is that when I start coding it happens that some line may give an error and I do not know how to solve it.
Then I would like to be able to ask AI what is wrong.

I guess a separate AI is not handy for that, because it needs to be able to read the context (more project files).

JonB

@Simmania said in Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?:

Then I would like to be able to ask AI what is wrong.

I guess I am a different generation from you, but what happened to figuring it out for yourself? Even Googling and reading what you come across, rather than just getting an answer from an AI? IMHO you learn so much extra this way. It's even enjoyable! :)

JoeCFD

@Simmania I use VS code with Claude on Linux to make Qt6 qml projects. The quality of qml code is not great and I have to make a lot of changes. But the code generated by Claude often works. Better to get some deep knowledge of QML by yourself.

marktuan

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Simmania

@JonB said in Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?:

@Simmania said in Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?:

Then I would like to be able to ask AI what is wrong.

I guess I am a different generation from you, but what happened to figuring it out for yourself? Even Googling and reading what you come across, rather than just getting an answer from an AI? IMHO you learn so much extra this way. It's even enjoyable! :)

Well it is just the modern way of googling, isn't it? I'm not asking it to write code.
And I want to spend more time on the creative process rather then on finding out what is wrong. And I will learn each time I get an answer.

clanhuth

Hey @Simmania,

Qt AI Assistant is supposedly faring as good or better than using some AI without it, thus a strong recommendation from my side:

https://www.qt.io/development/tools/ai-assistant

https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-qtaiassistant.html

Joe von Habsburg

Since I couldn’t figure out how to add it through Qt Creator, I open VS Code on my side screen and use that instead. It’s a simple solution, but it works. It can modify the project as needed.

JonB

@Joe-von-Habsburg said in Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?:

Since I couldn’t figure out how to add it through Qt Creator

Surely the AI can help you with that? ;-)

Joe von Habsburg

@JonB said in Which development tools to use when I want some AI assistance?:

Surely the AI can help you with that

:D

cristian-adam

@Simmania With Qt Creator 20 you can use the ACP Client to connect to an ACP Agent like Claude Agent, Codex CLI, or OpenCode and do any AI work.

The ACP Client plugin is part of the OpenSource Qt Creator.

Jack Jacki

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