Hi Hamilton,
I watched the video you linked and I have to say, the thoughtfulness you put into that design is genuinely impressive. The way you structured the layout to explicitly separate the data sourcing tools from the coding chat shows you have really lived through these friction points. It is rare to get such high-fidelity feedback, so thank you for putting that together.
Your sentiment on having the LLM “create code to automate a workflow” rather than using the LLM itself as the automation tool is spot on. That is a very popular sentiment across the industry right now, and it forms the basis for a lot of the “Code Mode” approaches we are seeing in newer tools. It is especially effective in cases where direct tool calling (MCP) doesn’t scale well…code acts as a much more flexible abstraction layer.
I think a lot of what you are describing, specifically that clean three-pane layout with data context, chat, and live preview, naturally lends itself to the workflows emerging in modern AI-enabled IDEs and IDEs paired with CLI-based coding agents.
While overhauling the Sandcastle UI to match that exact layout would be a massive undertaking, I think we can actually achieve the spirit of your workflow even more effectively through a custom VS Code Extension. In fact, we recently started exploring this exact path: Cesium Visual Studio Code Extension - We Need Your Input!
To tie this back to the other discussions in this thread (specifically with @Joscha_During), I think your vision is fully compatible with the concept of Agentic Skills. Instead of building a rigid UI inside the browser, we could provide the “Cesium Skills” (the data inspection and code generation logic you mentioned). You could then plug those skills into a VS Code workflow that offers that “Direct Rendering/Preview” capability right alongside your code. This would give you the freedom to manage your chat history and “undo” states (via Git) exactly as you described, without being constrained by a browser session.
I think an extension that offers specialized rendering of Cesium scenes right inside the IDE, powered by these portable skills, would arguably make for an even more powerful experience than a browser-only tool.
Would love to hear more of your thoughts on whether an official VS Code extension would satisfy that “clean workflow” requirement for you.