NeoVim AI Coding Assistant w/Avante

I wanted to try more integrated AI Coding Assistance with NeoVim. In the past I try various LLM's by asking to generate full projects and see how they do but I realize that is too much to ask and too wide open leaving the LLM to make a lot of assumptions. No different then a Product Manager giving vague requirements.

I generated a simple app with Gemini 3 with the prompt: "create an express.js project that has user registration and profile editing". It created a typical 1 file index.js app with no breakdown into functional areas in separate files. 

So for the first dive into contextual AI assistance I loaded up Avante into my NeoVim (similar to Cursors) which was pretty straightforward. Avante setup for LazyVim https://gitlab.com/geoffcorey/dotfiles/-/blob/master/.config/nvim/lua/plugins/avante.lua I used the config on Avante's Readme which used claude-sonnet-4-20250514

Then brought up the index.js file and opened avante (aa) and it asked for my Anthropic API Key so I bought $5 worth and generated an API key and put it in.  In avante I asked, "generate tests for /register route" and off it went and made a task list of 8 things to plow through and chugged on that for 5 minutes and it was done.   Ran the tests and they all worked. It also separated out code in index.js to new file app.js.    You can see all the code generation at https://gitlab.com/geoffcorey/simple

Total cost of test generation was $1.04

Next I switched to Claude 4.5 model (claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929) and asked "Add post /logout route to invalidate the JWT token." Claude added the route and additional tests for about $1.60

I have llama-cpp setup local and avante also setup to use that option but my video card isn't up to snuff to handle it so it drops back to CPU and takes forever. New vid card on the way so maybe I can try out local models. Stay tuned.