A coding assistant pays off when the team shares one tool and one rule for what can be pasted. It becomes a leak when everyone tries a different personal account.
Three shapes
| Shape | Good at | Watch |
|---|---|---|
| Editor plugin | Completions, small functions, tests | People pasting secrets into chat |
| AI IDE | Edits across a few files | A new editor the team will not adopt |
| Terminal agent | Repetitive refactors with a shell | Commands that run before anyone reads them |
Use it for boilerplate, tests, regex, SQL, and explaining a file you did not write. Do not ask it to design the system or to “just ship” a change that touches billing.
Rules before rollout
- Name the directories and data that never go into a prompt: secrets, customer exports, unreleased algorithms if policy says so.
- Require a test with the generated function. The author of the pull request still owns the diff.
- Keep a short prompt library: “explain this function,” “add a unit test,” “list failure cases.” New hires copy those instead of inventing risky ones.
- Review license and data-processing terms before a company-wide switch. Re-read them when the vendor changes the plan.
Individual taste in themes does not need a standard. The standard is the data boundary and the review habit. For the wider tool choice, see Choose AI tools that save time.