Choosing AI coding tools for a five-person startup
Small teams can't afford a procurement process. Here's a practical playbook for picking tools in a week.
If you're four engineers and a founder, every hour spent evaluating tools is an hour not shipping. Here is a one-week playbook that produces a defensible decision without burning a sprint.
Day one: pick the shortlist
Limit yourself to three tools — any more and you'll never finish. A reasonable 2026 shortlist: Claude Code, Cursor, and one terminal agent of your choice.
Skip anything that requires a sales call to try.
Days two through four: real work only
Each engineer uses one tool exclusively for two days on real tickets. No toy benchmarks. Rotate so two people try each tool.
Keep a shared doc with one bullet per surprising moment, good or bad.
Day five: decide
- Pick the tool with the fewest 'this got in my way' notes.
- Pick a backup for the one workflow the winner is weakest at.
- Set a 90-day re-evaluation date and move on.
What to ignore
Benchmark blog posts (including ours) are a starting point, not a decision. Your codebase, your conventions, and your team's habits matter more than any aggregate score.
Budget reality
At five engineers, the entire AI tooling line item is smaller than a single junior salary. Optimize for shipping speed, not for saving forty dollars a seat.
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