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Setting Up a Local Environment for AI-Assisted Development
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Setting Up a Local Environment for AI-Assisted Development
Setting up a local development environment is essential for building efficiently and productively. There are many types of applications you might choose to develop, each with its own tools and dependencies, but here I’ll outline the general setup I use for web application development and working with AI-assisted coding tools.
Why Local Development Matters
The overall concept of using a local development environment is that you can develop your application on your computer without any connection to the network. Once the local version is working as intended, you can push your changes to a remote server, either to a development server for final checks or directly to the production environment. This workflow allows for much faster development as the latency is gone when working locally, as well as the ability to make sure that the production environment only has code that has been thoroughly tested and is ready for prime time.
Setting Up the Local Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
The first step is installing your IDE. I use Visual Studio Code (VS Code), which has become the de facto standard for modern developers. One of the biggest advantages of VS Code is that new tools and integrations from major tech companies almost always arrive there first. This aligns with one of my main philosophies: stick with the most popular, battle-tested tools. After installing VS Code, I create a projects directory on my local machine and add a subfolder for each application I’m working on. One of my favorite features of VS Code is the integrated terminal, which lets me handle almost all my setup, builds, and version-control operations directly inside the IDE.
Installing Package Managers
Next, I make sure all the package management tools I rely on are installed. On a Mac, this starts with Homebrew, followed by the JavaScript package managers that power most modern web development workflows:
Having these installed means I can quickly add, update, or remove dependencies for any project from the command line.
Installing AI Coding Agents
Once the basic environment is ready, it’s time to install the AI agents. I primarily use Claude Code from Anthropic and Codex from OpenAI. In VS Code, open a terminal and follow the setup instructions for each tool. During installation, you’ll need to authenticate with their respective services.
NOTE
Installing the CLI tools for Claude Code and Codex is different from enabling their VS Code extensions. I prefer the CLI versions as they tend to be more powerful and flexible. If you want to learn more about the differen between using the VS Code extension for Claude Code vs. using the Extension I recommend this YouTube tutorial from Leon van Zyl.
Once installed, you’ll have both Claude Code and Codex available locally in your VS Code terminal—ready to assist with development, refactoring, and debugging tasks.
Wrapping Up
This minimalist setup gives me everything I need to begin building with AI assistance in a controlled, local environment. From here, I can iterate quickly, test confidently, and keep my production deployments clean.