Coding agents can be grouped by where and how they work. Common groups include:
IDE agents work inside an editor, such as agent features in Cursor or GitHub Copilot.
Terminal agents work through shell and repository tools, such as Claude Code or Aider.
Cloud agents run asynchronously in hosted environments and return a branch or pull request.
Issue-to-pull-request agents start from an assigned issue and prepare a reviewable change.
Continuous integration (CI) or scheduled agents run maintenance tasks after an event or on a timer.
The boundaries overlap because one product may support several modes. Compare them by execution environment, available tools, supervision, permissions, and how results return to the team. Those differences matter more than the category name.
Rewriting in plainer words…
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