Why Trial
Cursor is a fork of VS Code with deep AI integration. It’s not just autocomplete—you can chat with your codebase, reference files in prompts, and apply AI-generated changes directly.
What’s Compelling
- Codebase awareness - @mention files and folders in prompts
- Apply changes - AI edits appear as diffs you can accept/reject
- Composer mode - Multi-file edits in one conversation
- Tab completion - Smarter than Copilot in my testing
Why Not Adopt Yet
I’m a vim user. My muscle memory is decades old. Cursor’s vim mode is… okay. But it’s not vim.
More importantly, I haven’t found Cursor’s in-editor AI significantly better than:
- Claude Code for complex reasoning
- Copilot for autocomplete
- My existing workflow
The delta isn’t worth the switching cost yet.
Who Should Try Cursor
- VS Code users - Zero switching cost, just get more AI
- AI-curious developers - Great way to experiment with AI-assisted coding
- Teams - Cursor’s collaboration features look promising
What I’m Watching
Cursor is iterating rapidly:
- Memory - Remembering context across sessions
- Agent mode - Autonomous multi-step tasks
- Bug finder - Proactive issue detection
If they nail agent mode, I might switch. The ability to say “refactor this module to use the service layer pattern” and have it autonomously make all the changes would be transformative.
For now, I’m trialing it on side projects while keeping my vim setup for primary work.