If you aren’t using AI for coding by now, are you even a dev in 2026? I’ve spent some time letting Gemini Code Assist drive my VS Code setup. After the big “Gemini 3” update, the game has changed, but it’s still a wild west out there.

Here is the lowdown on the current state of Google’s AI sidekick.

The Context King

The standout feature of Gemini in VS Code is the 2-million-token context window. While other tools feel like they have a “goldfish memory,” Gemini can basically swallow your entire monorepo. You can ask it architectural questions that span hundreds of files, and it actually remembers that weird utility function you wrote three years ago.

My Lab Configuration

For this test, I used the following:

Physical Hardware NUC 32GB RAM, 12 Core CPU, 1 TB SSD 2 x Raspberry Pi 5

Workloads/Apps/Services Gemini Code Assist Extension in VScode Isolated Ubuntu Sandbox Servers

The Competition: Claude Code vs. OpenAI Codex

How does it feel compared to the other two big names in the terminal and editor?

  • Claude Code (Anthropic): Currently the “Senior Engineer” of the bunch. It has the highest “first-pass correctness.” If you ask Claude to refactor a complex nested loop, it usually gets it right the first time. Gemini can be a bit “lazy” by comparison, occasionally skipping steps or hallucinating a library version.
  • OpenAI Codex (GPT-5.3): The “Speedster.” It’s incredibly fast and has the best CI/CD integration. If you’re a GitHub power user, Codex feels like it’s part of the furniture. It’s better at short, snappy fixes than Gemini, but it lacks that massive context “brain” that Google provides.

The Good (Advantages)

  • Massive Context: I can’t overstate this. Feeding it 1M+ tokens means it knows your project better than you do.
  • Google Search Grounding: Unlike Claude or Codex, Gemini can “check the internet.” If you’re using a library that was updated this morning, Gemini can pull the latest docs while the others are stuck in their training data.
  • Price: Let’s be real, the free tier is unbeatable. 1,000 requests a day on the Flash model is basically “free forever” for a hobbyist.
  • GCP Integration: If your app lives on Google Cloud, Gemini is a wizard. It knows your IAM roles, Cloud Run configs, and BigQuery schemas natively.

The Bad (Disadvantages)

  • The “Lazy” Factor: Sometimes Gemini gives you the “logic” but asks you to fill in the boilerplate. Claude would have just written the whole thing.
  • VS Code Bloat: The extension feels a bit heavy. It adds a lot of UI “noise” (Next Edit Predictions, Agent Mode terminals) that can feel a bit cluttered compared to the minimalist vibe of Claude Code.
  • Occasional Hallucinations: Even in 2026, Gemini still loves to invent an NPM package that doesn’t exist when it gets cornered by a hard problem.

The Verdict

Gemini Code Assist is the ultimate tool for navigation and research. If you are jumping into a massive legacy codebase and need to understand how the plumbing works, it is hands-down the winner because of that context window.

However, if you want an AI that you can “set and forget” to build a whole feature while you grab coffee, Claude Code is still the boss of autonomous agents.

Final Score: 4/5 ⭐️
Great for the “Librarian” dev, but still needs a human supervisor for the “Architect” work.

References

  • Gemini Code Assist: https://codeassist.google/