Switching to Claude Code and VSCode Inside Docker

Summary

Last night I finished a transition from my old AI coding setup I've been using for a while to running Claude Code in Docker using VSCode's "Dev Container" feature. In this post I lay out a few of my thoughts on why I wanted to switch to something in the first place, and also a short guide for those who want to do the same. If you are here just for the guide + code (a tiny single file), here it is: https://github.com/tim-sha256/claude-in-docker🥺Important note!I'm not a professional vibecoder (thanks god) and I don't generate AI code on 9-5 basis (meh)I'm just a casual user occasionally getting help from llms on my projects, all of them being not corporate-serious-guys-enterprise-grade. I'm not looking for the most advanced 100x dev tools or workflows, nor $100+ subscriptions whose token limits I'll probably only reach once a year on a sleepless night.Before and whyUntil yesterday I've been using such setup: ChatGPT Plus 20$ subscription for occasional chats mostly unrelated to code, except for quickies and desperate attempts to feed o3 a bunch of code that Claude can't crack and get it all solved (mostly unsuccessful). Cursor Pro for additional 20$ (or how do they call it these days?) - for all "serious" coding. Which works all right, is convenient (been stuck with Cursor since August '24 and GPT since '23 without actively seeking an alternative), but has a couple issues that started to bug me recently.Issue 1: I'm greedy and I want my responses fastBefore Cursor went into drain-users stage recently, I did not use up all 500 requests / month not a single time while working on 1-2 projects during my free time (approx. 40-60 hours a month). Maybe I could've paid less on token-based plan, but I didn't really care – $20 is $20 :) But after their update removing the 500 requests limit "so you can enjoy unlimited requests to almost any model", I've been extremely upset by Cursor due to their inadequate rate limits. Sometimes I would type a prompt for Sonnet 4 (not even Opu...