I've mainly used gptel in Emacs (primarily with Claude), and I kind of already use the chat buffer like a document. You can freely edit the history, and I make very generous use of that, to steer where the model is going.
It has features to add context from your current project pretty easily, but personally I prefer to constantly edit the chat buffer to put in just the relevant stuff. If I add too much, Claude seems to get confused and chases down irrelevant stuff.
Fully controlling the context like that seems pretty powerful compared to other approaches I've tried. I also fully control what goes into the project - for the most part I don't copy paste anything, but rather type a version of the suggestion out quickly.
If you're fast at typing and use an editor with powerful text wrangling capabilities, this is feasible. And to me, it seems relatively optimal.
It has features to add context from your current project pretty easily, but personally I prefer to constantly edit the chat buffer to put in just the relevant stuff. If I add too much, Claude seems to get confused and chases down irrelevant stuff.
Fully controlling the context like that seems pretty powerful compared to other approaches I've tried. I also fully control what goes into the project - for the most part I don't copy paste anything, but rather type a version of the suggestion out quickly.
If you're fast at typing and use an editor with powerful text wrangling capabilities, this is feasible. And to me, it seems relatively optimal.