It depends on the work. For beginners, Gemini 2.5 Pro on Google AI Studio is a good start - free, simple, 1M context. For heavy iterative work you want a real AI coder that handles large codebases with incremental edits: Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code + Copilot, or Gemini CLI.
The honest ranking from daily use: Claude is the best AI coder by a wide margin (Claude Code and Cursor), but both have tightened message limits, so you toggle by task and remaining quota and save them for the complex pieces. Gemini CLI is the practical default for xlwings Lite - not Claude-level, but excellent for xlwings, Python FastAPI backends and simple HTML-JS UIs, and the free tier plus 1M context make it sustainable for everyday work. Skip ChatGPT for longer code - it forgets to re-check the instruction file and fills its context too fast. Whatever you pick, feed it the AI Coder Instruction File (shared in the xlwings guides) so its output stays reliable.
Guides, the instruction file, and live xlwings apps: xlwings-lite.tigzig.com. Post: https://www.tigzig.com/post/which-ai-coder-should-you-use-for-xlwings-lite-python-in-excel. Related: xlwings Lite vs Claude in Excel https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/xlwings-lite-vs-claude-in-excel-when-to-use.
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