VS Code + Copilot agent mode is how I built Chinilla solo. Plan, try, iterate, rollback, repeat until the architecture was tight. Copilot handled the boilerplate, I handled the judgment calls. Multi-file edits, inline terminal, TypeScript intelligence, and an extensions ecosystem nothing else touches. It's the full workshop, not just an editor.
It's GitHub. Every repo, every commit, every PR, every deploy hook. Chinilla's entire codebase, CI, and Render auto-deploys run through it. There is no alternative, there is only GitHub.
Auto zoom-in on clicks and keystrokes made my demo videos look professional without any manual editing. Recorded walkthroughs of Chinilla, FocuSee handled the zooms, transitions, and cursor highlights automatically. Clean output, low learning curve. Just record, edit few knobs, and export.
Zero-config deploys from a Dockerfile. Pushed my Rust API and Astro SSR app, Render handled TLS, scaling, and health checks out of the box. No YAML pipelines, no infra babysitting. For a solo dev shipping fast, it's the lowest friction between git push and production.
Auth, Postgres, and row level security in one place. Chinilla needed user accounts, project storage, Stripe subscription gating, and per-row access control. Supabase gave me all of that with a real Postgres database underneath, not some proprietary query language. Migrations, RLS policies, and the JS client just work. Went from zero to full auth + data layer in a weekend
Best cost-to-quality ratio for structured JSON generation. Chinilla needs every AI response in strict JSON (components, connections, behaviors) and Grok handles that reliably at a fraction of the cost per token. When you're burning hundreds of AI calls per user session on system design, code mapping, and simulation analysis, the pricing difference adds up fast.
Astro's island architecture let me ship a heavy React canvas app with near-zero JS on static pages. SSR + client:only on the interactive components meant fast loads without sacrificing the real-time simulation features. Easiest framework I've used for mixing static marketing pages with a full SPA workspace
ChatGPT by OpenAI
Claude by Anthropic