The 2026 AI dev stack: what actually ships product

Skip the hype. Here's what indie devs and small teams are using to ship features faster.

Devon Park·May 28, 2026·10 min read

Pick your editor

Cursor for greenfield and indie work; Copilot if your team's already deep in JetBrains. The wrong choice is sticking with no AI assist at all.

Use Claude for diff review and test generation. It catches subtle issues that completion tools miss.

Treat AI as a junior infra engineer: great at writing the first draft of a Terraform module, never the final reviewer.

Will AI replace developers?

It's reshaping the role, not deleting it. The senior bar is going up; the junior bar is shifting toward shipping with AI well.