Claude Code Takes the Lead in AI Coding Tools

This week in coding news, a major survey showed that Claude Code has become the most popular AI coding assistant. The tool beat out other popular options like GitHub Copilot and Cursor. The survey asked nearly 1,000 software engineers about their work, and 95% said they use AI tools every week. At smaller companies, 75% of engineers said Claude Code is their main tool.

Cursor Adds New Automatic Features

Meanwhile, Cursor released a new system called Automations. This tool helps programmers by automatically running AI agents when things change in their code or when they get messages. Instead of having to tell the AI what to do every time, the AI can now work on its own and only ask humans for help when needed. Cursor says it runs hundreds of these automations every hour.

Google Tests AI Models for Apps

Google created a new test called Android Bench to see which AI models work best for building Android apps. Google's own Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview got the highest score at 72.4%. Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 came in second with 66.6%.

Research Questions Instruction Files

Scientists from Switzerland did research on AGENTS.md files, which are documents that tell AI coding agents how to work with projects. The researchers found that AI-written instruction files actually made agents slower and more expensive to run. However, files written by real people did help a little bit.