[HN Gopher] Cursor 3
___________________________________________________________________
Cursor 3
Author : adamfeldman
Score : 230 points
Date : 2026-04-02 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cursor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cursor.com)
| minimaxir wrote:
| So it has converged to the same UI/UX as the Claude/Codex desktop
| apps. If that's the case, why use Cursor over those more
| canonical apps?
| babelfish wrote:
| Model independence
| bigyabai wrote:
| That gap was closed by opencode months ago.
| babelfish wrote:
| different products - CLI vs apps
| bigyabai wrote:
| Not really, no. Coding CLIs are hugely popular with the
| "App user" crowd, see Claude Code.
| simplyluke wrote:
| I think that's more fashion than anything.
|
| Every company I've worked at has still had a few
| engineers who insist on working exclusively in the CLI
| with vim/emacs prior to AI. Every other engineer used
| some flavor of a desktop app ranging from more minimal
| editors to incredibly complex IDEs. I expect we land back
| on UIs long term.
| jtrueb wrote:
| I kinda quit using it. The tab feature is useful when making
| minor or mundane changes, but I quite prefer the codex GUI if I
| am going to be relatively hands off with agents.
| davidgomes wrote:
| 1. Cursor is multi-model, meaning you can use at least a dozen
| different models.
|
| 2. Cursor's UI allows you to edit files, and even have the good
| old auto-complete when editing code.
|
| 3. Cursor's VSCode-based IDE is still around! I still love
| using it daily.
|
| 4. Cursor also has a CLI.
|
| 5. Perhaps more importantly, Cursor has a Cloud platform
| product with automations, extremely long-lived agents and lots
| of other features to dispatch agents to work on different
| things at the same time.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm a product engineer at Cursor!
| neil_naveen wrote:
| Is there going to be any more development on the frontier of
| cursor tab completion and features like that (more focused on
| helping engineer's with llm's for complex tasks) since I feel
| this is the main reason I dont use claude code or codex. I
| want to be writing the code, since I want performant, small,
| codebases that I understand (I am writing eBPF stuff, so
| agentic coding doesnt work that well)
| simlevesque wrote:
| You can use almost any model with Claude Code.
| dominotw wrote:
| that doesnt make sense. how?
| simlevesque wrote:
| Here's how to use MiniMax v2.7 for example:
| https://platform.minimax.io/docs/token-plan/claude-code
|
| You just add this to your ~/.claude/settings.json:
| { "env": { "DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER": "1",
| "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://api.minimax.io/anthropic",
| "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "YOUR_SECRET_KEY",
| "API_TIMEOUT_MS": "3000000",
| "CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC": 1,
| "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
| "ANTHROPIC_SMALL_FAST_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
| "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL":
| "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
| "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
| "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed"
| } }
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I hope this comes off as constructive criticism, but I'm
| confused about what cursor is now.
|
| Cursor is an IDE and an agentic interface and a cli tool and
| a platform that all work locally and and in the cloud and in
| the browser and supports dozens of different models.
|
| I don't know how to use the thing anymore, or what the thing
| actually is.
| lukebechtel wrote:
| it sounds like you described it pretty well!
| bensyverson wrote:
| I'm having the same issue, as a former Cursor user and
| current Claude Code addict. CC is a very clear mental
| model. So is "agent in your IDE," like Cursor used to be
| and Xcode is now. The advantage of my current setup is that
| it's the terminal and Xcode, just as it has been for over
| 20 years.
|
| I applaud Cursor for experimenting with design, and seeing
| if there are better ways of collaborating with agents using
| a different type of workspace. But at the moment, it's hard
| to even justify the time spent kicking the tires on
| something new, closed source and paid.
| jrsj wrote:
| I would switch to Cursor 3 in a heartbeat if it supported
| Claude Agent SDK (w/ Claude Max subscription usage) and/or
| Codex the way that similar tools like Conductor do
|
| And I would happily pay a seat based subscription fee or
| usage fees for cloud agents etc on top of this
|
| Unfortunately very locked into these heavily subsidized
| subscription plans right now but I think from a product
| design and vision standpoint you guys are doing the best work
| in this space right now
| zwaps wrote:
| Let me give this a shot:
|
| Cursor was the tool you use to pair program with AI. Where
| the AI types the code, and you direct it as you go along.
| This is a workflow where you work in code and you end up with
| something fundamentally correct to your standards.
|
| Claude Code is the tool you use if you want to move one
| abstraction layer up - use harness, specs, verifications etc.
| to nail down the thing such that the only task left is type
| in the code - a thing AI does well. This is a workflow where
| the correctness depends on a lot of factors, but the idea is
| to abstract one level up from code. Fundamentally, it would
| be successful if you don't need to look at code at all.
|
| I think there is not enough data to conclusively say which of
| these two concepts is better, even taking into account some
| trajectory of model development.
|
| I do feel that any reason I have for installing Cursor is
| that I want to do workflow 1, rather than workflow 2. Cause I
| have a pretty comprehensive setup of claude code (or
| opencode, or whatevs) and I think it does everything you list
| here.
|
| So, as a product engineer, you probably wanna mention why it
| matters that Cursor UI allows you to edit files with auto-
| complete.
| eranation wrote:
| Computer use in the cloud for me is THE killer feature.
| liuliu wrote:
| Brand recognition. Since "model-is-the-service", various
| previously-interesting companies become thin API resellers and
| the moat is between "selling a dollar for fifty cents" and
| Brand awareness.
|
| I am not saying this in bad faith. Model companies cannot
| penetrate every niche with the same brand recognition as some
| other companies you would consider as "API resellers" do.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I won't, but it does have a couple features Codex lags,
| including remote SSH (huge, because the easiest way to sandbox
| your agent is to put it into a VM), and the ability to kicking
| things of on your mobile and finishing up on your desktop
| (again, really nice if you get a good idea out on a walk, or
| while talking to a colleague.
|
| These are features I am sure Codex will soon have, of course.
|
| Then there is the advantage of multiple models: run a top level
| agent with an expensive model, that then kicks of other models
| that are less expensive - you can do this in Claude Code
| already (I believe), but obviously here you are limited to
| something like Haiku.
| lubujackson wrote:
| For $20 a month, I can plan and implements a couple features in
| 4 hours with Claude. Then I have to wait.
|
| For $20 a month, I can plan and implement thousands of features
| using Composer 2 or Auto with Cursor. The usage limits are
| insanely higher. Yes, the depth of understanding is not Opus
| 4.6, but most work doesn't need that. And the work that does
| need it I pass to Claude.
|
| I can code 8 hours a day using LLMs as my primary driver
| spending just $40 a month.
| dgellow wrote:
| I mean, in that case, cannot you do the same by just using
| sonnet instead of opus?
| bentt wrote:
| Yep, Composer 2 has been quite good for me too. I only turn
| to Opus for major brainteasers.
| zwaps wrote:
| My man, have seen the Sonnet 4.6 tho
| mschulkind wrote:
| You can do this with copilot, for the $40/mo range, AND you
| get to use opus 4.6 for all of it. Copilot is absurdly cheap
| if you can make it fit your work profile.
| georgeven wrote:
| the codex limits are actually pretty high too. You might want
| to check it out.
| eranation wrote:
| Computer use in the cloud is the main reason I use them. It's a
| game changer. It has its own dev env with a browser / shell and
| can test what it wrote (a bit of a hassle to set it up, but
| when it's working, wow)
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| Funny how in this space, once a company feels dead, you don't
| even check out their release if the video looks decent, it would
| have to be totally revolutionary.
| whicks wrote:
| This seems like a mix of Claude Code and Superset
| (https://superset.sh/). Interested to try it out and see how well
| it performs all the same.
| seamossfet wrote:
| Man, I wish they'd keep the old philosophy of letting the
| developer drive and the agent assist.
|
| I feel like this design direction is leaning more towards a chat
| interface as a first class citizen and the code itself as a
| secondary concern.
|
| I really don't like that.
|
| Even when I'm using AI agents to write code, I still find myself
| spending most of my time reading and reasoning about code.
| Showing me little snippets of my repo in a chat window and
| changes made by the agent in a PR type visual does not help with
| this. If anything, it makes it more confusing to keep the context
| of the code in my head.
|
| It's why I use Cursor over Claude Code, I still want to _code_
| not just vibe my way through tickets.
| whicks wrote:
| Agreed completely on this (as a heavy daily user of Cursor).
| It's been the perfect in-between of coding by hand (never
| again!) and strictly "vibe coding" for me. Being able to keep
| my eyes on all the changes in a "traditional" IDE view helps me
| maintain a mental model of how my systems work.
|
| I'm hoping in this new UI in v3 I can still get that experience
| (maybe it's just hidden behind a toggle somewhere for power
| users / not shown off in the marketing materials).
| leerob wrote:
| I'm an engineer at Cursor, can try to clarify questions here.
|
| > I wish they'd keep the old philosophy of letting the
| developer drive and the agent assist. Even when I'm using AI
| agents to write code, I still find myself spending most of my
| time reading and reasoning about code.
|
| We very much still believe this, which is why even in this
| new interface, you can still view/edit files, do remote SSH,
| go to definition and use LSPs, etc. It's hard to drive and
| ship real changes without those things in our opinion, even
| as agents continue to get better at writing code.
|
| > I'm hoping in this new UI in v3 I can still get that
| experience (maybe it's just hidden behind a toggle somewhere
| for power users / not shown off in the marketing materials).
|
| This new interface is a separate window, so if you prefer the
| Cursor 2 style, that continues to exist (and is also getting
| better).
| whicks wrote:
| Great, glad to hear that! Stoked to kick the tires on
| Cursor 3. Thanks for confirming, leerob!
| seamossfet wrote:
| > We very much still believe this
|
| That's good to hear, I might have jumped a little too
| quickly in my opinion. It's a bit of a Pavlovian response
| at this point seeing a product I very much love embrace a
| giant chat window as a UX redesign haha.
|
| I would love to see more features on the roadmap that are
| more aligned with users like us that really embrace the
| Cursor 2 style with the code itself being the focal point.
| I'm sure there's a lot you can do there to help preserve
| code mental models when working with agents that don't hide
| the code behind a chat interface.
| vvilliamperez wrote:
| Once I downloaded it, it made sense. The blog post almost
| made me cancel my subscription because it seemed to get rid
| of the IDE entirely.
| dominotw wrote:
| > It's been the perfect in-between of coding by hand (never
| again!) and strictly "vibe coding" for me.
|
| I dont think there is an inbetween. Its really hard to 'keep
| an eye' on code by casually reading diffs. Eventually it will
| become vibe coding.
|
| Software engineers are deluding themselves with spec driven,
| plans, prds whatever nonsense and thinking its not
| vibecoding.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Why?
|
| Reading diffs is an inescapable skill, needed for
| evaluating any kind of PR. This just makes it more
| interactive.
|
| I just use Copilot with VS Code, but my flow is to just ask
| Claude to make a change across whatever files it needs to
| touch, then either accept the changes, edit the changes
| directly, or clarify whatever was different from my
| expectations.
|
| Reading diffs is central to how I work with these agents.
| emp17344 wrote:
| AI labs think they're building an autonomous replacement for
| software engineers, while software engineers see these systems
| as tools to supplement the process of software engineering.
| pjmlp wrote:
| AI labs won't replace all of the engineers, while engineers
| becoming more productive, leads to smaller team sizes.
| seamossfet wrote:
| Yeah that's the disconnect though right? Even with the best
| frontier models, you need to do a lot of system design work,
| planning, and reviewing before you can let these models run.
|
| These models are infinitely more effective when piloted by a
| seasoned software engineer and that will always be the case
| so long as these models require some level of prompting to
| function.
|
| Better prompts come from more knowledgeable users, and I
| don't think we can just make a better model to change that.
|
| The idea we're going to completely replace software engineers
| with agents has always been delusional, so anchoring their
| roadmap to that future just seems silly from a product design
| perspective.
|
| It's just frustrating Cursor had a good attitude towards AI
| coding agents then is seemingly abandoning that for what's
| likely a play to appease investors who are drunk on AI
| psychosis.
|
| Edit: This comment might have come off more callous than I
| intended. I just really love Cursor as a product and don't
| want to see it get eaten by the "AI is going to replace
| everything!" crowd.
| dominotw wrote:
| > AI labs think they're building an autonomous replacement
| for software engineers
|
| And management everywhere is convinced that thats what they
| are paying for. My company is replacing job titles with
| "builder". Apparently these tools will make builder out of
| paper pushers hiding in corporate beaurcarcy. I am suddenly
| same as them now per my company managment.
| cyral wrote:
| I just upgraded and you can still show/hide the entire editor
| like before
| vachina wrote:
| Agent is where tokens are consumed, and where they can charge
| you more.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| That philosophy wouldnt help justify the narrative for their
| massive valuation.
| adityamwagh wrote:
| How would they make money from the tokens then haha? The main
| revenue driver of these companies is to get people to use more
| tokens. That's what they will optimise for. Getting the
| developers out of the way is the way to do it.
| Archonical wrote:
| Isn't Cursor's business model mostly subscriptions? They're
| the ones paying for inference, not the user directly, right?
| So wouldn't they be incentivized to minimize token usage per
| unit of user value, not maximize raw tokens?
| bb1298 wrote:
| Nope. Enterprise you pay for seat to access all of the
| enterprise features and then you just pay for tokens as you
| go. Vast majority of their actual revenue comes from
| enterprise and their revenue is just api pass through to
| the model providers.
| fweimer wrote:
| It's pay-as-you-go after a certain number of included
| requests/tokens: https://cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing
| moregrist wrote:
| Does Cursor make money from tokens?
|
| I thought it was primarily a user of Anthropic and OpenAI
| APIs, so the fewer tokens you use to accomplish a task, the
| higher their margin.
| rnxrx wrote:
| Gemini is featured just as prominently, and they've most
| recently been pushing their own model series (Composer).
| verdverm wrote:
| Why I harp on owning your stack instead of outsourcing your Ai
| experience and interface to Big Ai. There are many frameworks
| that make this much easier today. I chose ADK which is more of
| a lift, but also works for non-coding use cases.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| I agree. I am building www.propelcode.app for this exact
| reason.
|
| I get the temptation of letting agents do everything. But they
| create really bad systems still (bad architecture,
| reimplementation of solved problems etc).
|
| I also get the temptation for beginners and think it's great
| that more people are empowered to build software but moving
| entirely to chat means they won't learn and level up which in
| the long run limits their ability.
|
| I could be wrong. And my way of thinking is dying but
| thankfully I can build the tool I want.
| davnicwil wrote:
| My guess would be this is less driven by product philosophy,
| more driven by trying to maximise chances of a return on a very
| large amount of funding in an incredibly tough market up
| against formidable, absurdly well-funded competitors.
|
| It's a very tough spot they're in. They have a great product in
| the code-first philosophy, but it may turn out it's too small a
| market where the margins will just be competed away to zero by
| open source, leaving only opportunity for the first-party model
| companies essentially.
|
| They've obviously had a go at being a first-party model company
| to address this, but that didn't work.
|
| I think the next best chance they see is going in the vibe-
| first direction and trying to claim a segment of that market,
| which they're obviously betting could be significantly bigger.
| It's faster changing and (a bit) newer and so the scope of
| opportunity is more unknown. There's maybe more chances to
| carve out success there, though honestly I think the likeliest
| outcome is it just ends up the same way.
|
| Since the beginning people have been saying that Cursor only
| had a certain window of time to capitalise on. While everyone
| was scrambling to figure out how to build tools to take
| advantage of AI in coding, they were one of the fastest and
| best and made a superb product that has been hugely
| influential. But this might be what it looks like to see that
| window starting to close for them.
| htrp wrote:
| > They've obviously had a go at being a first-party model
| company to address this, but that didn't work.
|
| I thought there was an entire initiative to build their own
| coding model and the fine tunes of in Composer 1.5 and
| Composer 2 were just buying them time and training data
| rustystump wrote:
| It is interesting that i find composer to be one of my
| favorites as while it is a bit dumb it is about 100x faster
| than the fat boys.
|
| Sometimes u need the beef of opus but 80% composer is plenty.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| I have been on the fence if I think composer is useful, but
| the speed argument is one I hadn't really considered. I use
| cursor with Opus almost exclusively but the other day I
| tried using OpenCode locally with a 6-bit quantized version
| of Qwen 3.5 and holy crap the speed and latency were mind
| blowing. Even if not quite as sharp as big boi Opus and the
| gang.
|
| Now you've got me thinking I should give composer another
| go because speed can be pretty darn great for more generic,
| basic, tasks.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You know, it's stuff like this making me think maybe the anti
| capitalists have a point.
|
| A company makes a popular product customers like, but to
| satisfy the VCs the company must make a product the customers
| don't like but could make the VCs more money.
|
| Not sure this is the "invisible hand" Adam Smith had in mind.
| charcircuit wrote:
| In order to make more money you have to make a product
| customers want.
| jimbokun wrote:
| According to the comment I replied to you have to make
| the product VCs think will make VCs the most money, even
| if that's at odds with what your customers are telling
| you they want.
| runarberg wrote:
| Anti-capitalist here: Our point is actually the same point
| as the one Anti-feudalists had. The consumer hostility
| observed under capitalism is simply a corollary.
| peyton wrote:
| To be fair feudalism (the row-farming kind) kind of
| collapsed because people found better deals with the rise
| of trade and mercantilism and such. It wasn't anything
| anybody needed to make points over.
|
| IDEs seem headed in the same direction. Seriously,
| watching Codex rip apart binaries in parallel and Claude
| go from nothing to app in one prompt, I'm pretty sure
| there's no need for me to look at any code. I'm fine
| using tools that just emit machine code if that's more
| efficient.
| runarberg wrote:
| It is easier to imagine the end of the world then the end
| of feudalism.
|
| I kind of like the story of how Malthus had his theory of
| societal collapse because he couldn't imagine a better
| system then mercantilism. That societies would rather
| collapse then to end their colonial monopolies.
|
| I see a similar theory today with around depopulation,
| that as society gets older and relatively fewer working
| age people there are, that society would rather collapse
| then we find a better system then Capitalism.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| (I think I agree), Georgist here, Our point is also that
| these rent-seeking abilities (something which even the
| creator of capitalism famously hated the land-lords quite
| a lot)
|
| This is the issue with something like Cursor and VC's
| funding because I feel like these private equities
| essentially seek rent in their own way by hollowing out
| the products from within, to maximize profits without
| doing efforts in a manner very similar to Rent-seeking,
| and most large companies also feel like a rent-seeking on
| the monopoly that they establish (like google or
| facebook)
|
| I have made someone who was communist/socialist agree to
| georgism and I have had someone who was extremely
| capitalist agree to georgism, and to be honest, whether
| it be georgism or anti capitalism or socialism, I think
| that the world just wants a system where a person is
| treated with dignity within the economic cogs.
|
| My opinion is that as long as we can all agree on the
| last premise about dignity for individuals within the
| economic cogs, we can all have meaningful conversations
| to make that a premise, hopefully a reality.
|
| (I feel like the people who might deny dignity to people
| within this particular context, have either a
| bias/incentive to not look towards the problem, or are
| uninformed, or lack the energy to fight towards change
| within the system, and more importantly the _hope_ that
| the future can be better)
|
| I am not hopeful about the current political systems
| (even around the whole-world at times), I feel like there
| should be more information and decentralization within
| politics.
|
| Essentially, politics really just feel unaccountable to
| me, your vote really stops mattering to politicians
| if/when money starts talking. But technically, this
| system can be broken through with enough votes.
|
| I really hope for a future where politics and politicians
| feel accountable and genuine, maybe even someone from
| down the street who we can have some chats with to
| actually know them.
|
| Ironically or unironically, just as how the landlords
| pushed against Georgism/George within really making
| political difference, The same is happening right now as
| well where Online landlord monopolies dictate how people
| interpret and vote by using their algorithms/influence.
|
| Politics like many other problems feel like a chicken and
| egg problem, like things work until they don't and things
| don't work until they do. At a more individual level,
| stepping outside of most algorithms and the reason why I
| joined hackernews is for doing something like this,
| myself.
| epolanski wrote:
| The cancer: growth at every cost or die.
|
| God forbids you make a great product in a specific niche and
| are happy with the money flowing.
|
| Nope, has to be more.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| > It's a very tough spot they're in.
|
| It's a very tough spot they put themselves into. If the goal
| wasn't to get filthy rich quick it would probably be possible
| to make a good product without that tough spot.
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| As these products mature people are going to see more of this
| stuff. These are the contours of the market. The technology
| is incredible but it's still subservient to the economics of
| building products.
|
| It's the "why can't Facebook just show me a chronological
| feed of people I follow". Because it's not in their interests
| to do so.
| w29UiIm2Xz wrote:
| As a Cursor user who hasn't tried Claude Code yet, am I missing
| anything? I seem (sometimes) exceptionally productive in it and
| it's working for me. To my understanding, Claude Code is all
| terminal, but something like an IDE seems like the better
| interface to me: I want to see the file system, etc. It seems
| Cursor doesn't have the mindshare relative to Claude in public
| discussion spaces.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Claude Code isn't really "all terminal" if you embed that
| terminal in your IDE. I still use Cursor (for now), but I
| embed a CC panel via extension. With this launch of Cursor 3,
| I'll probably get off Cursor for good. I have zero interest
| in this.
| vira28 wrote:
| Curious, why cursor for this? VSCode or pretty much pure
| open source IDE's have CC integration. Or am i missing
| something?
| ohmahjong wrote:
| As someone whose work enforced a switch from Cursor to Claude
| Code, I do keep on top of the code by pairing it with an IDE,
| tracking/viewing changes etc. There's no real obstacle to
| using an IDE as you normally would, with Claude Code as a
| sidecar.
| zwaps wrote:
| Claude Code is where you move up one abstraction layer.
| Almost everyone using it productively has spend a lot of time
| working on their harness, ensuring that everything is planned
| out and structured such that all that is left is really type
| in the code. This typically works without error. Before that,
| you interact a lot via Claude Code in whatever abstraction
| you feel is right.
|
| That's basically it. You can review changes afterwards, but
| that's not the main point of Claude Code. It's a different
| workflow. It's built on the premise: given a tight and
| verifiable plan, AI will execute the actual coding correctly.
| This will work, mostly, if you use the very best models with
| a very good and very specific harness.
|
| Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are
| basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction
| down.
|
| I have no idea what is better, or faster. I suspect it
| depends at least on the problem, the AI, and the person.
| ninininino wrote:
| > Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are
| basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction
| down.
|
| This is not really true anymore.
|
| Cursor has better cloud agents than Claude. The multi-agent
| experience is better, the worktree management is better.
| Tagging specific code or files in chat is better.
|
| It's hard for me to express the level of pain and
| frustration I feel going from Cursor to Claude /
| Conductor+Claude / Claude Extension for VS Code, Claude in
| Zed, etc.
|
| Really hoping Claude puts more energy into Cowork as a
| competitor for Cursor and Codex.
| dugidugout wrote:
| I think you are still speaking in the lower abstraction
| in terms of zwaps' provided understanding. "Tagging
| specific code" or "files" is likely the type of
| interfacing most Claude Code users are _not_ doing.
|
| Instead they are defining architecture through specs and
| verification-loops and attempting to one-shot solutions
| fitting clear tests. On reflection, I personally don't
| have many prompts with CC referencing files or code
| directly, rather I speak in specifications I can then
| track to a given instance of work in review.
|
| This isn't to suggest you can't work at this abstraction
| in cursor or w/e interface, but the features you suggest
| are hardly relevant to the divide zwaps is identifying.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| I feel like perhaps you haven't used Cursor. I use both
| CC and Cursor extensively and as far as I can tell there
| is nothing that the CC agent will do that Cursor won't do
| just as well (often using Opus as the backend) and at the
| same time I get the advantage of seeing the changes in a
| full IDE if I want to. Their new agent-forward UI hides
| the code if you don't want to see it as much, but I and
| many others think that it giving me a full, colourful
| graphical editor to view changes in is a huge advantage.
|
| I'm not telling you to go use cursor, just to help
| clarify that you can drive both solutions with the exact
| same approach and skillset and get very similar results -
| the difference is the UI. I personally like being able to
| paste screenshots into the agent, etc.
| jimbokun wrote:
| So that sounds like Claude Code is an inferior subset of
| Cursor. That Cursor can work like Claude Code, but Claude
| Code is lacking Cursor's editing capabilities.
| visarga wrote:
| I run Claude Code from Zed. Very nice experience.
| dmix wrote:
| I tried that for a couple weeks and it's no where near as
| well integrated as Cursor. I hope they get there though
| because I like Zed.
|
| Zed plus Claude feels more like using isolated browser
| extensions instead of something part of the browser (unless
| you pay for Zeds AI thing then the integration is
| marginally better).
| dmix wrote:
| It's good to try Claude Code just so you focus on skills,
| agents, and CLAUDE.md
|
| Then when you go back to Cursor it will still support all of
| those things in the settings.
|
| Using Cursor you tend to not think about those as much since
| Cursor does a lot of it for you as part of the IDE
| integration. But it's good to refine it your own way.
|
| But for the most part there isn't much difference.
| omcnoe wrote:
| You don't have to stop using the IDE just because you are
| using Claude Code. Using both at the same time is best of
| both worlds in my experience.
| retinaros wrote:
| that is what is catching the most users right? they want to
| vibe code their way into oblivion
| throwaw12 wrote:
| > I still want to _code_ not just vibe my way through tickets.
|
| Now we have 3 ways of coding:
|
| * vim / emacs - full manual
|
| * VSCode / IntelliJ - semi-automatic
|
| * ClaudeCode/Codex/OpenCode/... - fully automated
|
| Cursor can't stay in between
| hparadiz wrote:
| There are some critical parts of architecture where sometimes
| I really do need to see the code and even sometimes put a
| wall around it and tell the agent they can't touch it.
| Hoefner wrote:
| Cursor CLI exist - https://cursor.com/cli
| vorticalbox wrote:
| This is how use cursor 99% of the time. The other 1% is in
| zed.
| ninininino wrote:
| Saying it can't stay in between is like saying a company
| can't sell both regular bikes and electric bikes. Or bikes
| that can do both.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Why?
|
| Are you saying they can't compete with VS Code in the semi-
| automatic space?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| At least these are IDEs with the save button finally gone
|
| We needed that jump, there were still floppy disk icons
| peder wrote:
| > I feel like this design direction is leaning more towards a
| chat interface as a first class citizen and the code itself as
| a secondary concern.
|
| That's because that's exactly where we're headed, and it's
| fine.
| skor wrote:
| NASA vibes all its note taking apps
| cedws wrote:
| Yeah, this model where you don't get an editor anymore feels
| like a step backwards. I don't want to give up LSPs, being able
| to step into/rename functions and stuff like that. I should
| still be the one in control of the code - the agent is the
| assistant, not me.
|
| This is why Zed's direction felt pretty strong to me.
| Unfortunately their agentic features are kind of stagnating and
| the ACP extensions are riddled with issues.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| did you watch the 90 second video in the post? all of this is
| addressed
| cedws wrote:
| No but I have now. It's hard to tell from that few seconds
| but it doesn't look like it's really putting the developer
| in the driving seat, just providing a minimal escape hatch
| for manual edits.
| blks wrote:
| It's very unfortunate what direction Zed has taken. It was
| very fast and nice editor, that's now infected with those
| "AI" features.
| logicprog wrote:
| It's still a very nice and fast editor, and you can just
| switch off those AI features. They're still releasing
| features and fixes for the non-AI parts.
| logicprog wrote:
| I actually run a custom fork of Zed based on their master
| branch because of how stagnated the built-in agent is. Master
| branch Zed agent did get sub-agents, parallel threads, better
| thread management, and worktrees though, and I implemented
| agent skills and the ability to select which model to use for
| sub-agents for it. And with those features, I'm fairly
| satisfied.
| whazor wrote:
| Imagine you are the top engineer of your company. Everybody
| wants your attention, many meetings, design sessions, and of-
| course code reviews.
|
| With Claude Code, I use Gitlab for reviewing code. And then I
| let Claude pull the comments.
|
| It looks like the new UI has a big focus on multiple agents.
| While it feels wrong, the more you split up your work into
| smaller merge requests, the easier it is to review the work.
|
| Chat first is the way to go since you want the agent busy
| making its code better. Let it first make plans, come up with
| different ideas, then after coding let it make sure it fully
| tests that it works. I can keep an agent occupied for over a
| hour with e2e tests, and it's only a couple hundred lines of
| code in the end.
| blks wrote:
| Then code.
| uduni wrote:
| I guess they are assuming LLMs will just get better and better
| until youn don't look at code at all.
|
| Ignoring the fact that software will just keep getting more and
| more complex and interconnected... There will always be a new
| frontier or code and UX
| criley2 wrote:
| The philosophy still works, you just have to change your view.
| Instead of trying to work side by side with the agent on every
| turn (inside of your IDE), instead the agent performs a unit of
| work and then you review it. You can use your IDE to view the
| diff, or another diffing tool.
|
| If you've dug in sufficiently on plan mode, then what the agent
| is executing is not a surprise and shouldn't need input. If it
| does, the plan was insufficient and/or the context around the
| request (agents.md, lessons.md, or whatever tools and documents
| you use ) weren't sufficient.
|
| EDIT: Maybe it doesn't work in cursor, but I continue to use
| vscode to review diffs and dig in on changes.
| nektro wrote:
| embrace tradition, return to vscode
| rebolek wrote:
| I vibe my way through my ideas. I look at LLM code sometimes to
| cry and cringe and then I beg LLM to have basic dignity and
| self respect to write code it shouldn't be ashamed of. But then
| I instruct it to do something and it does it with speed I'm
| never able to achieve, even if the code is ugly. But it works.
| varispeed wrote:
| Works until you discover subtle bugs hiding behind ugliness.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Which is true for human-written code as well.
|
| In both cases, it's your processes (automated testing,
| review, manual QA) that is the bulwark against bugs and
| issues.
|
| With AI, you can set up great processes like having it
| check every PR against the source code of your dependencies
| or having it generate tests for what's an intermediate step
| or ephemeral solution that you would never write tests for
| if you had to do it yourself.
|
| There's this idea on HN that if you delegate too much to
| AI, you get worse code. Presumably not appreciating all the
| code-improving processes you can delegate to AI,
| particularly processes you were never doing for hand-
| written code.
| girvo wrote:
| > I still want to _code_ not just vibe my way through tickets.
|
| You and I want this. My EMs and HoEs and execs do not. I weep
| for the future of our industry.
| aquir wrote:
| Cursor is so good for what I do is that I've cancelled my Cursor
| subscription and went back to VSCode (w/o Copilot) for the diff
| review and code navigation.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I'm not following at all?
| vecter wrote:
| I assume they meant that "Claude Code is so good..." and that
| they cancelled Currsor and just use CC + VSCode.
| Iolaum wrote:
| Looking at the video cursor 3 UI looks very similar to the one I
| experience using OpenCode :D
| acedTrex wrote:
| So they are just turning into another vibe code slop app?
|
| At least before they were tangentially still an actual developer
| tool, standard vsc windows, the code was the point etc.
|
| Now they offer really nothing interesting for professionals.
| cyral wrote:
| All the VS code stuff is literally still there
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Now they offer really nothing interesting for professionals.
|
| That's a curious statement given that what they're doing is
| just becoming more like Claude Code, which seems extremely
| popular on this forum.
| pjmlp wrote:
| What would all these companies do without Microsoft shipping VS
| Code as open source, probably still stuck with vi and Emacs.
|
| Still curious which ones will survive when the AI gold diggers
| finally settle.
| vachina wrote:
| There's also Eclipse.
| tipsysquid wrote:
| _shudders_ does anyone pine for eclipes?
|
| I haven't used it in a decade, Im sure it has has evolved
| ikidd wrote:
| It's still horrendous.
| guzfip wrote:
| My job replaced eclipse with VSCode for Java+Spring
| development.
|
| Can't say I miss eclipse, but a lot of the VSCode
| extensions seems to utilize old legacy eclipse stuff and
| has the bugs to match.
| davnicwil wrote:
| Did you consider IntelliJ, even just the community
| edition?
|
| If not you really should. IntelliJ with Java is one of
| the best dev experiences I've ever had. I'm a VSCode fan
| for most other things but for Java I wouldn't even
| remotely consider using it over IntelliJ if I had the
| option :-)
| tombert wrote:
| There was a time that Eclipse was my preferred editor. It
| was free and it gave cool sexy features that all the cool
| kids who could afford Visual Studio had, and it worked on
| Linux!
|
| Nowadays I'm basically a Neovim purist, but I have positive
| memories of it. I'm kind of afraid to revisit it at this
| point, though, since everyone hates on it and I suspect I
| wouldn't like it as much.
| seamossfet wrote:
| Oh my god, this comment gave me flashbacks to when I was
| writing android apps in Eclipse + ADT
| alhimik45 wrote:
| And Eclipse Foundation maintains VSCode-compatible editor
| designed to be a framework for other IDEs: https://theia-
| ide.org/
|
| IMO sounds like natural foundation for Cursor
| mgrandl wrote:
| Sounds like cursor is not using vscode anymore in this release?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| every AI lab have cli for agent coding. you don't need VS Code.
| if you want coding agent to write code for you just use cli
| then use any IDE, text editor or whatever you prefer to review,
| edit or write code.
| Sil_E_Goose wrote:
| There is even a cli version of cursor.
|
| https://cursor.com/cli
| Uehreka wrote:
| VS Code wouldn't have won the mid-2010s editor wars if it was
| closed source (note that VS Code has not helped MS ramp people
| up to VS itself). The winner of that war was always going to be
| an open source editor, it was just Microsoft whose concept won
| out. Closed source editors like Coda failed to gain traction
| and even Sublime Text fell eventually.
|
| If MS ever decided to discontinue VS Code or relicense it,
| there would be blood in the water. I guarantee you there would
| be multiple compelling competitors in under a year and probably
| a new open source winner with consolidation in 5.
|
| So to answer your question: they would be forking Atom (which I
| think would've won otherwise).
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Sublime Text fell because VS Code was just better, not
| because it was closed source. I switched from Sublime Text to
| VS Code, and didn't care one bit how open or close either
| was.
|
| Not saying there aren't people who care, there are, but they
| are a small minority.
| sushisource wrote:
| Zed's not a VSCode clone, and it's fantastic and OSS. They
| don't really have a business model that I see working though,
| IMO. I pay them purely because I love the editor, but the
| editor is free. The AI integration is what you pay for, but I
| just run claude code in a terminal.
| vially wrote:
| Thought I'd give it a try and installed the latest version.
| Application crashes at startup on Linux (Wayland) with: "The
| window terminated unexpectedly (reason: 'crashed', code: '139')".
| Probably yet another instance of developers mostly testing and
| doing quality assurance on macOS/Windows.
| jonasnelle wrote:
| Hey, sorry about that! Some AUR packages share cursor in a way
| that isn't forward+backwards compatible across releases. We
| recommend using our official AppImage from
| https://cursor.com/download Alternatively, please use a
| different AUR package that doesn't have these issues
| https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/cursor-nightly-bin
| aeroevan wrote:
| I am using it on fedora from the yum repo and it's crashing
| for me too. $ rpm -q cursor
| cursor-3.0.4-1775123877.el8.x86_64
|
| https://forum.cursor.com/t/sigsegv-in-zygote-type-zygote-
| on-...
|
| Apparently if launched with --verbose it works, but that's
| the same crash I was seeing without the verbose flag
| vially wrote:
| I prefer to avoid AppImages if I can but I gave it a try
| anyway and it still fails with exactly the same error. What
| made you think it's just a packaging issue?
| extr wrote:
| What is Cursor doing? They need to relax a little bit. Recently I
| saw they released "Glass" which WAS here:
| https://cursor.com/glass, now just redirects to /download.
|
| Is "Cursor 3" == Glass? I get they feel like their identity means
| they need to constantly be pushing the envelope in terms of agent
| UX. But they could stand to have like an "experimental" track and
| a "This is VS Code but with better AI integration" track.
| leerob wrote:
| Glass was a codename while the UI was in early alpha with
| testers. It redirects to download now because there is no
| special link anymore. It's just part of Cursor 3 itself.
| weli wrote:
| Stop fucking my shit up please
| reasonableklout wrote:
| Looks like the editor is still there, and the revamped UI is a
| new window you can open on the side.
| AdrienPoupa wrote:
| My exact reaction when they override my cmd+e shortcut and
| change the default layout every two months :)
| throw03172019 wrote:
| I hope we can use it like non-agent developers where code is
| first class citizen.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Maybe I'm old, but I only recently started using Gemini to
| _assist_ me in coding. Now it seems everyone is heading to giving
| agents to do the full-blown coding. I guess if the result code is
| good, it doesn 't matter who's coding (me or AI).
|
| But are they affordable already for developers who don't earn a
| Silicon Valley salary? Developers in 3rd world countries?
| seamossfet wrote:
| I'm not convinced people who are doing real work on production
| applications with any sizable user base is writing code through
| only agents. There's no way to get acceptable code from these
| models without really knowing your code base well and basically
| doing all the systems thinking for the model.
|
| Your workflow is probably closer to what most SWEs are actually
| doing.
| simplyluke wrote:
| This, at least for me, has changed in the past six months.
| Which is the same thing people were saying in the months
| prior to that, so I will accept some eye rolls. But at least
| for our pretty large monorepo opus + a lot of engineering
| work on context got us to a point where a large portion of
| our engineers are doing most of their work with agents first
| and a lot of back and forth + smaller hand edits.
| kypro wrote:
| Agreed. The size of the repo isn't a limiting factor
| anymore. It's more about the type of change.
|
| Agents today can generate solid code even for relatively
| complex requirements. However, they don't always make the
| right trade-offs.
|
| Just because something works doesn't mean it scales. It
| doesn't mean it can handle unexpected user input. It
| doesn't mean it's easily extensible.
|
| Today engineers really just need to define those high-level
| technical requirements.
| simplyluke wrote:
| > Today engineers really just need to define those high-
| level technical requirements.
|
| At least within our company, this is quickly becoming
| what it means to be a software engineer.
| nprateem wrote:
| Not true. As long as you don't blindly accept their garbage
| and keep things behind sensible interfaces so you can
| reimplement if necessary, and have good tests you're fine
| ryandrake wrote:
| You really need to keep them on a tight leash, stop and
| correct them when they start screwing up, and then the
| remaining 90% of the work starts after they say their done,
| where you need to review/refactor/replace a lot of what they
| produced.
|
| The only way you're going to let an agent go off on its own
| to one-shot a patch is if your quality bar is merely "the
| code works."
| 6thbit wrote:
| Looks like they're now playing catchup.
|
| What's the pitch for using Cursor now a days?
| maipen wrote:
| Good autocomplete for those of us who still write code.
| maipen wrote:
| So funny , I remember their talk about re-imagining their editor
| for the future of agents. They end up copying codex gui lol.
|
| These AI companies are running out of ideas, and are desperate. I
| can't imagine investing in companies that are 3 month behind open
| source alternatives, and their target audience being the most
| experimental kind there is.
|
| Looks pretty though.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| I really dislike this push away from augmentation and towards
| agents. I get that people want to be lazy and just have the LLM
| do all of their work, but using the AI as an augmentation means
| you are the driver and can prevent it from making mistakes, and
| you still have knowledge of the codebase. I think there is so
| much more we could be doing in the editor with AI, but instead
| every company just builds a chatbot. Sigh.
| rvshchwl wrote:
| I love Cursor. As a Product Manager who's not really had coding
| experience, it's been very useful. I'm able to have a browser on
| the side and make changes easily, and click through exactly what
| I want to change rather than having the LLM guess which component
| I'm talking about. Having multiple models has also been great, as
| well as the MCP integration. Most times I don't need all the
| MCPs, but I like being able to turn them on or off based on what
| I'm doing, like JIRA or Grafana.
|
| One of my favorite startups and I genuinely like to keep
| subscribing to them.
| simplyluke wrote:
| Daily cursor user who's been previewing this a bit while it was
| in alpha.
|
| I think it's a really solid release, and while cursor seems to
| have fallen out of the "cool kids club" in the past three months
| it remains the most practical tool for me doing AI-first work in
| a large production code base. The new UI works better in a world
| where agents are doing most of the work and I can hop back into
| the IDE interface to make changes.
|
| We've set up a linear integration where I can delegate simpler
| tasks to cloud agents, and the ability to pick that work up in
| cursor if I need to go back in forth is a real productivity
| boost. The tighter integration with cloud agents is something
| I've been hoping for recently.
|
| I appreciate not being tied at the hip to one model provider, and
| have never loved doing most of my work from the command line. I
| was on vs code + meta's internal fork of it for years prior to
| the current AI wave, so that was a pretty natural transition. I'm
| pretty optimistic on cursor's ability to win in the enterprise
| space, and think we're going to see open source models + dev
| tools win with indie devs over things like claude code as costs
| start getting passed down more and the gap between frontier
| models and open source gets tighter.
| arrakeen wrote:
| so just like how every chat app has to look like slack, every ide
| has to look like vscode, now every agent workspace has to look
| like the codex app? codex app, antigravity, and now this all have
| the exact same UI design...
| cetinsert wrote:
| CLIs are 100000x better than this non-sense.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| No they are not. Tired of this 40 year old terminal setback
| instead of having real and beautiful GUIs. Its fine for some
| kind of people but don't think what works for you is acceptable
| for the other 50% of us.
| tyre wrote:
| I agree with you but what they're launching here is not a
| beautiful GUI. It's minimalist (in a bad way) and not really
| innovative.
| bentt wrote:
| I'm a Cursor user but I am not an agent maximalist. I just like
| having it work on code in an IDE with good inline diffs and a
| nice chat UI.
|
| This change is possibly too big and unless all my existing usage
| patterns are maintained or improved, I'll likely give CC a try
| now. Not optimistic.
| all2 wrote:
| If you're in the market, OpenCode is quite good and has become
| my daily driver. You may also consider pi[0], but that's (from
| what I've heard) more agenty.
|
| [0] https://shittycodingagent.ai/
| zenoprax wrote:
| I only used Cursor in short bursts so 20 USD per month was hard
| to justify. I recently switched to VSCodium + Cline +
| OpenRouter and I can use any model I want (currently Step 3.5
| Flash for "Temu Sonnet"). It scratches the itch very well for
| me for literal pennies on the dollar.
|
| I should also add: Cline doesn't require any account at all. I
| just installed the extension and added my OpenRouter API key
| and that was it.
| babelfish wrote:
| No per-agent auto-worktree? This is the killer feature of
| Conductor, having to type `/worktree` into every new chat isn't
| really a resolution. Not even sure what selecting 'Worktree' for
| a new chat does
| jeffnv wrote:
| i would expect it before the end of the month, why not?
| ninininino wrote:
| "having to type `/worktree` into every new chat isn't really a
| resolution"
|
| I don't know what you're talking about. My experience with
| Cursor (before this new v3) is that new Cursor agent tabs /
| cloud agents already intelligently manage worktrees to prevent
| conflicts.
| babelfish wrote:
| Wow, maybe something is wrong with my setup. In Cursor 3, I
| am clicking "New Agent" at the top left. My root repository
| is correctly listed on top of the composer, and I clicked the
| icon to the right of it and selected 'Worktree'. Then, I
| instruct the model to run `pwd` and tell me it's git status.
| It's always just on `main` in my root repository. I dug
| through the settings and couldn't find anything, and after
| finding this comment[0] on their forums gave up. Would you
| mind sharing a bit more about your setup/how it works?
|
| [0] https://forum.cursor.com/t/working-with-worktrees-in-
| cursor/...
| nu11ptr wrote:
| I've been running Claude Code in my Cursor IDE for a while now
| via extension. I like the setup, and I direct Claude on one task
| at a time, while still having full access to my code (and nice
| completions via Cursor). I still spend time tweaking, etc. before
| committing. I have zero interest in these new "swarms of agents"
| they are trying to force on us from every direction. I can barely
| keep straight my code working on one feature at a time. AI has
| greatly helped me speed that up, but working serially has
| resulted in the best quality for me. I'll likely drop Cursor for
| good now and switch back to vanilla VsCode with CC.
| fragmede wrote:
| > have zero interest in these new "swarms of agents" they are
| trying to force on us from every direction.
|
| Good for you! Personally waiting for one agent to do something
| while I shove my thumb up my butt just waiting around for it to
| generate code that I'll have to fix anyway is peak opposite of
| flow state, so I've eagerly adopted agents (how much free will
| I had in that decision is for philosophers to decide) so
| there's just more going on so I don't get bored. (Cue the
| inevitable accusations of me astroturfing or that this was
| written by AI. Ima delve into that one and tell there was not.
| Not unless you count me having stonks in the US stock market as
| being paid off by Big AI.)
| wilkystyle wrote:
| I have personally found that I cannot context switch between
| thinking deeply about two separate problems and workstreams
| without a significant cognitive context-switching cost. If
| it's context-switching between things that don't require
| super-deep thought, it's definitely doable, but I'm still way
| more mentally burnt-out after an hour or two of essentially
| speed-running review of small PRs from a bunch of different
| sources.
|
| Curious to know more about your work:
|
| Are your agents working on tangential problems? If so, how do
| you ensure you're still thinking at a sufficient level of
| depth and capacity about each problem each agent is working
| on?
|
| Or are they working on different threads of the same problem?
| If so, how do you keep them from stepping on each other's
| toes? People mention git worktrees, but that doesn't solve
| the conflict problem for multiple agents touching the same
| areas of functionality (i.e. you just move the conflict
| problem to the PR merge stage)
| nprateem wrote:
| It's not that difficult. You get it to work on one deep
| problem, then another does more trivial bug
| fixes/optimizations, etc. Maybe in another you're
| architecting the next complex feature, another fixes tests,
| etc etc
| simplyluke wrote:
| This is a struggle I've also been having.
|
| It's easier when I have 10 simple problems as a part of one
| larger initiative/project. Think like "we had these 10
| minor bugs/tweaks we wanted to make after a demo review". I
| can keep that straight. A bunch of agents working in
| parallel makes me notably faster there though actually
| reviewing all the output is still the bottleneck.
|
| It's basically impossible when I'm working on multiple
| separate tasks that each require a lot of mental context.
| Two separate projects/products my team owns, two really
| hard technical problems, etc. This has been true before and
| after AI - big mental context switches are really expensive
| and people can't multitask despite how good we are at
| convincing ourselves we can.
|
| I expect a lot of folks experience here depends heavily on
| how much of their work is the former vs the later. I also
| expect that there's a lot of feeling busy while not
| actually moving much faster.
| jwpapi wrote:
| Once I started agents and Claude code hid more and more
| of the changes it did from me it all went downhill..
| girvo wrote:
| > I also expect that there's a lot of feeling busy while
| not actually moving much faster.
|
| Hey don't say that too loudly, you'll spook people.
|
| With less snark, this is absolutely true for a lot of the
| use I'm seeing. It's notably faster if you're doing
| greenfield from scratch work though.
| jwpapi wrote:
| I tried swarms as well, but I came back to you as well.
| It's not worth it even th e small worse description double-
| checking, fine-tuning is not worth the effort the worse
| code will cost me in the future. Also when I don't know
| about it.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| > Personally waiting for one agent to do something while I
| shove my thumb up my butt just waiting around for it to
| generate code that I'll have to fix anyway
|
| I spend that time watching it think and then contemplating
| the problem further since often, as deep and elaborate as my
| prompts are, I've forgotten something. I suspect it might be
| different if you are building something like a CRUD app, but
| if you are building a very complicated piece of software,
| context switching to a new topic while it is working is
| pretty tough. It is pretty fast anyway and can write the
| amount of code I would normally write in half a day in like
| 15 minutes.
| ryandrake wrote:
| In my workflow, it's totally interactive: Give the LLM some
| instructions, wait very briefly, look at code diff #1,
| correct/fix it before approving it, look at code diff #2,
| correct/fix it before approving it, sometimes hitting ESC
| and stopping the show because the agent needs to be course
| corrected... It's an active fight. No way I'm going to just
| "pre-approve all" and walk away to get coffee. The LLMs are
| not ready for that yet.
|
| I don't know how you'd manage a "swarm" of agents without
| pre-approving them all. When one has a diff, do you review
| it, and then another one comes in with an unrelated diff,
| and you context switch and approve that, then a third one
| comes in with a tool use it wants to do... That sounds
| absolutely exhausting.
| imiric wrote:
| I find it puzzling whenever someone claims to reach "flow" or
| "zen state" when using these tools. Reviewing and testing
| code, constantly switching contexts, juggling model contexts,
| coming up with prompt incantations to coax the model into the
| right direction, etc., is so mentally taxing and full of
| interruptions and micromanagement that it's practically
| impossible to achieve any sort of "flow" or "zen state".
|
| This is in no way comparable to the "flow" state that
| programmers sometimes achieve, which is reached when the
| person has a clear mental model of the program, understands
| all relevant context and APIs, and is able to easily
| translate their thoughts and program requirements into
| functional code. The reason why interrupting someone in this
| state is so disruptive is because it can take quite a while
| to reach it again.
|
| Working with LLMs is the complete opposite of this.
| Aurornis wrote:
| For my work I've never found myself sitting around with
| nothing to do because there's always so much review of the
| generated code that needs to be done
|
| The only way I can imagine needing to run multiple agents in
| parallel for code gen is if I'm just not reviewing the
| output. I've done some throwaway projects where I can work
| like that, but I've reviewed so much LLM generated code that
| there is no way I'm going to be having LLMs generate code and
| just merge it with a quick review on projects that matter. I
| treat it like pair programming where my pair programmer
| doesn't care when I throw away their work
| zwaps wrote:
| I like cursor and its workflow as a tool, but I do wonder whether
| moving to cloud (I mean for lots of the cool features) will work.
| Yes we all GET Cursor has to make money. No one is fooled what
| this is about. It's also fine, the video and screenshot thing is
| great.
|
| However, is this really a moat?
| wg0 wrote:
| They're juggling on two ends. An IDE and bringing their own
| models. Kinda makes them "full stack".
|
| Nerve wreaking race.
|
| I think I'll switch over to cursor on trial basis.
| hokkos wrote:
| I don't think this is the direction where cursor users want to
| go, they basically free up the market for VSCode and Zed, and
| won't be able to compete against lab owning their model.
| numbers wrote:
| I left cursor and went back to VS Code b/c the editing experience
| is basically the same and cursor was adding more and more agentic
| features which don't appeal to me. I'm a happy Claude Code user
| and having my code separate from the planning/brainstorming part
| of the task makes implementing its own step with me
| driving/writing the code.
| eranation wrote:
| The biggest killer feature Cursor has that so far no one else
| seems to have is cloud based computer use. It's such a game
| changer. You get a walkthrough video instead of just diffs. But
| as soon as anthropic release it (their computer use is local
| only, no thanks) I might consider switching though. Mostly due to
| the subsidized $200 plan.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| The features here don't seem game changing. The most compelling
| parts are mostly already available in Claude or Codex or their
| related apps and services.
|
| The biggest concern is that if you want to use SOTA models I
| don't see how they can match what you get with the subscription
| plans of Anthropic and Open AI, whether your spending $20 or $200
| a month.
|
| Even if they could match what you get in terms of token quantity,
| they are giving their tools away for free for the foreseeable
| future and Cursor is not.
| mgambati wrote:
| Is composer 2 any good? Can it be compared to opus ou gpt 5.4?
| dmix wrote:
| No it's not very good. But when you run out of Claude tokens
| it's perfectly fine for small stuff.
|
| Cursor's inline autocomplete is very good though, much better
| than anything I could reproduce in Zed with various 3rd party
| "edit" LLMs (although checking google, they announced a new
| model since I tried it https://zed.dev/blog/zeta2)
| tyre wrote:
| This is a _really_ underwhelming UI for something that is agent-
| first. It looks like they 're mimicking Notion.
|
| The next generation of interfaces are not going to look like an
| evolution into minimalist text editor v250. This is like people
| iterating on terminals before building native or web
| applications.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Cursor seems like far worse value than Codex with a ChatGPT
| subscription. Doesn't equivalent usage of the $200 subscription
| cost over $1000? I don't understand why people use it when you
| can just get multiple Pro subscriptions.
| rbren wrote:
| I still think every developer should be building their own IDE
|
| https://github.com/rbren/personal-ai-devbox
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I don't understand how this product can be productively useful.
| It looks like any other AI chat bot, but I remember hearing
| people speak very positive things about it. What am I missing?
| motbus3 wrote:
| Cursor died for me when they star putting limits and time waits
| everywhere even on more expensive plans.
|
| I totally preferred the other way, but at some point , there is
| boiler plate or organizations you just want done and it does not
| make sense to put you waiting minutes a time to confirme few
| refactors. That literally killed the vibe for cursor to me
| Gimpei wrote:
| I used to have a pro-cursor subscription, but it was way too
| expensive because I'd always hit my limit. I realized I could
| just use claude code + the free version of cursor for
| autocomplete and it worked even better. At this point, I'm not
| understanding the value that cursor is bringing. A souped up
| claude code? All I have to do is wait a few months and anything
| useful will be in claude code or codex or whatever.
| dalemhurley wrote:
| Thanks, it is horrible. This is a massive step backwards. The IDE
| provides so much extra abilities that an agent simply can't
| handle.
| karmasimida wrote:
| This is just Codex App, like even the font feels the same
| crimsonnoodle58 wrote:
| I'm confused how and if Cursor is still relevant since the Claude
| Code VSCode extension came out.
|
| The biggest downside for me with Cursor was losing access to
| gated Microsoft extensions like Python and C#. Even when vibing
| there are times you will still need a debugger or intellisense.
|
| I note in the comments lots of people saying they are moving back
| and this latest move looks like the final nail in the coffin for
| Cursor.
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