Claude Desktop to Claude Code: What I Learned Rebuilding My AI Dev Environment 3 Times

I Had All the Tools. Nothing Worked. "I want to use AI to make my development faster." With that thought, I installed every tool I'd heard about — Cursor, Claude Desktop, Obsidian, GitHub. I configured MCP connections, grabbed API keys, designed directory structures, and mapped out workflows. Then I tore it all down and rebuilt it. Three times. Looking back, the reason is clear. I started with tools before deciding what I actually needed to do. This article isn't a setup guide. It's the story of three configurations I actually lived through — what broke, what clicked, and why each transition happened . If you've installed a bunch of AI tools and still feel like you're not getting the most out of them, this might resonate. Building something with AI tools? I built Pure Mark Annotate — a PWA image annotation tool — using the exact workflow described in this article. Zero friction, browser-based. The tool and the process are inseparable. The Two Configurations Compared Config A (Initial)