28 Dec 2023 software
Last weekend, I decided it was finally time to install an AI coding assistant on my personal computer.
I initially started looking at GitHub Copilot–the de facto AI coding assistant–but shied away once I realized it requires a paid subscription. I already pay for ChatGPT plus, and worst case scenario I should be able to use that subscription for my coding assistant needs. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
After a few Google searches, I found Codeium, which is free for individuals. The company behind it is, “committed to having an industry leading free tier forever.” I doubt it, but that’s good enough for me for now.
Installation was straightforward, other than the fact that I had to learn Vim package management first (which I’ve been meaning to do anyway). The Codeium GitHub repo had several suggestions, and vim-plug caught my eye for its advertised easy-of-use. So I installed it:
curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim
And then added the following to my ~/.vimrc:
call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
Plug 'Exafunction/codeium.vim', { 'branch': 'main' }
call plug#end()
After which, installing Codeium was as simple as running :PlugInstall. Nice!
Once installed, I had to authenticate with Codeium’s servers via :Codeium
Auth; I assume the access token I copy-pasted into my Vim console was saved
locally somewhere, but I haven’t bothered to look for it yet.
Anyway, surprisingly, Codeium seems to… just work? Don’t get me wrong, the completions aren’t mind-blowing, but they definitely make writing boilerplate less tedius. Here are a few examples:
Prompt:
# Bash trim suffix from a string
Completion:
# Bash trim suffix from a string
trim_suffix() {
local string="$1"
local suffix="$2"
echo "${string%$suffix}"
}
Commentary: I think this works?
Prompt:
# Write a Python function to
Completion:
# Write a Python function to trim suffix from a string
def trim_suffix(string, suffix):
return string[:-len(suffix)]
Commentary: Interesting! Codeium was smart enough to catch on to what I was doing, and complete the comment, along with the code. It looks correct to me, though it doesn’t include type hints and doesn’t work if the string doesn’t actually end with the given suffix.
Prompt:
**Prompt**:
```java
Completion:
**Prompt**:
```java
# Write a Java function to
```
**Completion**:
```java
# Write a Java function to trim suffix from a string
public static String trimSuffix(String string, String suffix) {
return string.substring(0, string.length() - suffix.length());
}
```
Commentary: Ok, now this is cool. Codeium figured out that I’m currently writing a Markdown blog post, and predicted the content of the next prompt and it’s completion, and provided Markdown content for both. Sure, it gets the Java comment syntax wrong, but this code is out of context. (I wasn’t originally planning on doing anything meta in the examples section, but this was too cool not to include.)
Maybe I’ll write a more detailed review of Codeium once I’ve had more time with it. For now, it’s a nice, free productivity win.
A few final notes:
I had to add this line to my ~/.vimrc in order for the completions to
render in dark gray.
set t_Co=16
I changed the default key bindings in my ~/.vimrc. Now it’s C-y to
toggle manual mode and C-o to cycle through completions. Just works better
for me.
function! ToggleCodeiumEnabled()
let g:codeium_manual = !g:codeium_manual
echo "Codeium autocompletion is " . (g:codeium_manual ? "off" : "on")
endfunction
let g:codeium_manual = v:true
imap <C-y> <Cmd>call ToggleCodeiumEnabled()<CR>
imap <C-o> <Cmd>call codeium#CycleCompletions(1)<CR>
I disabled telemetry. I don’t want Codeium training off of my files. God forbid I accidentally open up a file with sensitive information in it. Additionally, I configured Codeium to start in “manual” mode. Presumably this means Codeium won’t look at the content until I request it to, but who knows. (The code is open source, so I could look, but I’m busy writing this post.)