After months of daily use, Cursor has become my primary code editor. Here’s what I’ve learned about this AI-first IDE.

What is Cursor?

Cursor is built on VS Code—the same foundation as Antigravity. Cursor focuses on multi-turn AI conversations directly in your editor. You chat with Claude or GPT-4, and the AI helps you write, refactor, and debug code through conversation. The VS Code base means familiar shortcuts, extensions, and settings work seamlessly.

The Setup

The transition from vanilla VS Code to Cursor is smooth. Your extensions, keybindings, and settings port over immediately. That’s a massive advantage for adoption.

What Works Well

AI-Assisted Coding

The Tab autocomplete feature is genuinely useful. It predicts not just single lines but entire code blocks, learning from your project’s patterns and style. It’s not perfect, but when it’s right, it saves real time.

The Composer

The newest addition: Composer lets you write code with multi-turn conversations. You describe what you want, and Claude (or GPT-4) generates it. Then you iterate. For scaffolding new features or refactoring large chunks, this is transformative.

Context Awareness

Cursor’s ability to reason about your entire codebase - understanding imports, function signatures, and architectural patterns - means suggestions are actually relevant.

Where It Falls Short

Occasional Noise

Sometimes autocomplete triggers when you don’t want it. Disabling it in certain filetypes helps, but the UX could be smoother.

Token Costs Add Up

If you use Claude with Cursor, the token usage is real. Costs accumulate quickly on large projects. Plan your budget.

Latency

On slower connections or with large codebases, the AI features can lag. Not a dealbreaker, but noticeable.

The Verdict

Cursor is the most mature AI code editor available today. If you write code for a living and want to stay on the frontier of developer tooling, it’s worth $20/month. The Composer feature alone justifies it for me.

Rating: 8.5/10

The gap to 10 is token costs and occasional brittleness. But as an IDE + AI assistant hybrid, it’s ahead of the curve.