My current AI development process, if you want to call it that, is getting one AI tool working on one project while having another work on a different project. This only works if one or both projects aren’t near the end where I have to test and have AI fix a lot of things. This process grew out of the fact that sometimes it takes AI a little while to get a task done, but not enough time for you to get any real work done yourself. So it was either work on another project or scroll through Reddit.
But Verdent put a kink in that plan.
I needed something for Verdent to work on. When I had Kiro build Obsidian plugins, one which was relatively simple, it created over a dozen tasks and took anywhere from two to four hours for each plugin. So I figured a couple of plugins would be enough work for a Saturday afternoon.
The Projects: What I Threw at Verdent
I had two ideas picked out to build and I used Auto Run mode to build both:
Obsidian Cleaner Plugin : A “cleaner” plugin that checks that attachments in the Obsidian attachment folder and provide you with a checkbox list of all those that aren’t linked so you can delete them. It does the same thing with conflicted files. If I find any more common things I clean like this, I will add them later.
3D Tag Explorer Plugin : A plugin that takes hierarchical tags like llm/writing/software and turns them into a 3D node graph with notes containing those tags included as the final nodes.
Pretty straightforward stuff. I figured these would keep Verdent busy while I worked on something else.
The Reality Check: When Hours Becomes Minutes
Verdent finished both of these Obsidian plugins in less than 15 minutes each.
Now these plugins were relatively simple, but I did not expect that.
There was one bug in the tag explorer where the background was above the node graph. I mentioned it to Verdent and it fixed it quickly. The cleaner plugin just worked on first try.
So now I’m sitting here at 10:30 AM on a Saturday with two working plugins and I really wanted to focus on another task while Verdent just did its thing. This is not the kind of problem I expected to have with AI coding tools.
Panic Building: More Projects to Feed the Beast
I had to scramble to find more work for Verdent to do. Here’s what I threw at it next:
BookForge
A web app, API, command line app, and library that converts markdown files into simple epubs. This was simple but I bet it took less than 30 minutes. I really did not trust it.
It was essentially done with the first commit and worked well enough to be the MVP. One commit. For a complete application with multiple interfaces. What the hell is happening to software development? I have made a total of eight commits to the repo. The rest were to add docker, make slight modifications to the text in the web app, and create a release script so I can use it as a library in other projects.
PromptOS
A service, libraries, and extensions to store prompts and other text, markdown, and JSON instruction files for AI. This was the most complex of the four projects. Verdent broke it into 4 phases. After each phase I did a commit and approved it to start on the next phase.
Site Factory
A project for building pre-configured Gatsby sites quickly. I’m still unsure of the architecture of this one and over-architected it twice. This teaches me not to use tools I haven’t used before and have AI build the project at the same time. I started over again after reading documentation on Gatsby and the other tools I planned to use to get a better idea of what I actually wanted.
Mostly Static
A set of services and dashboard for static sites. I threw this in at the last minute to put the last bit of my generous beta access to work. This was multiple phases also. But that Saturday, Verdent built two Obisidian plugins and four applications in a few hours. And did not use up the 2000 credits I got for the day.
Verdent Features: The Good Stuff That Actually Works
I didn’t test Verdent Deck because my personal Mac is still an Intel one and apparently I’m living in the stone age of computing.
Plan Mode
Verdent’s plan mode is where things get interesting. It will have you approve the plan before it starts building. If you’re in Auto Run mode, it will just run until it’s done with the project, though it did stop and ask about certain commands that might be destructive. Or you can go directly to Skip Permissions mode and have it stop asking question. I stuck to the middle road and only had to tell it to continue a couple of times.
If your directions are vague, it will ask you a series of questions to help ensure it builds what you are expecting.
For larger projects, it breaks work into phases and tells you when each is done. PromptOS was the most complex in that it had an API, website, desktop app, and extensions for two applications. Verdent broke that into 4 phases automatically. Another project I started building after this set was broken in 11 phases.
You may want to tell it to save the plan to the project docs folder, so you can keep it in version control for reference, since it doesn’t do that automatically. In the newest version, you can copy the content of the plan from the chat and save it to the project if you want.
The other features, to tell you the truth, I haven’t touched yet, because I simply didn’t need to.
Rules System
The rules system lets you set custom instructions that persist across projects. This is useful for coding standards, preferred libraries, or just telling it not to do stupid shit that you’ve seen it do before.
Subagents
Verdent uses specialized subagents for different types of work. You don’t have to think about this much - it just routes tasks to the right AI worker automatically.
MCP Support
Model Context Protocol support means Verdent can integrate with other tools and services. This is probably more useful than I realize, but I haven’t had time to explore it fully given how fast everything else has been happening.
The Pricing Reality Check
During the beta, I got 2000 credits a day. These were hard to use up even when I was actively trying to burn through them. Once the beta was over, I received a bucket of credits. Right now, I’m testing how long these credits last to determine how I’ll use Verdent in the future.
The pricing tiers are reasonable for what you get. If you’re doing any serious development work, the cost of the tool becomes insignificant compared to the time it saves. But I’m still figuring out my usage patterns before committing to a subscription.
The Verdict: Too Fast and Good to Ignore
I was definitely happy with the results. During the beta, getting through 2000 credits in a day required serious effort. The speed and quality of the output is genuinely impressive.
Because I will be using it in the future. It is just too fast and good not to. Right now the only AI subscription I have is Claude Pro, so I use Claude Code mainly. But I also have API accounts at most of the big AI companies. So I might just pay for credits as I go for a while until my usage is consistent and then pick up a subscription.
The multi-AI workflow is becoming essential. When one tool is thinking, another can be building. When you have AI assistants that can complete substantial projects in under 30 minutes, the bottleneck becomes your ability to feed them work, not their ability to do it.
Conclusion: The Future of Lazy Coding
Verdent actually delivered on its promises. The difference between Verdent and some other AI coding tools I’ve used is the speed, the fact that it rarely gets confused about what I’m asking it to do, and, even though I was dreading testing the apps it built, they had less bugs and weirdness than I expected.
We’re at the point where AI coding assistants are good enough that the economics start to make sense for most developers. When something can build a complete application in 30 minutes, you find a way to afford the monthly subscription.
The real challenge now isn’t getting AI to write code. It’s keeping up with how fast it can work and making sure you’re feeding it projects that are actually worth building. But honestly, that’s a good problem to have.
I’m still figuring out the economics of AI-assisted development, but when something works this well, you adapt. The alternative is falling behind while other developers are shipping software at warp speed.
And if you’re still writing everything by hand while AI tools like Verdent exist, well, you might want to reconsider your approach. The future of coding is here, and it’s fast enough to finish your weekend projects before lunch.
You can learn more about Verdent here and find the VS code plugin or Verdent Deck here.
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