Cursor

Cursor is a fork of VS Code with an AI model built into every surface: tab completion, inline edits on a selection, a chat that reads your project, and an agent that can run commands and edit files on its own. It opens your existing VS Code setup as is.

How I use it

As the place where I read code. When a change is small enough to describe, I describe it and let a terminal agent do it. When I want to understand what is going on, or the fix needs my hands on the keys, I open Cursor. The tab completion is the feature I would miss most; it predicts the next edit including the jump to another line, and it is right often enough that I stopped noticing it. The inline edit on a selected block is the second: select a function, say what is wrong, accept the diff.

What surprised me is how little I had to change. Every extension, theme and keybinding from VS Code came along, so the first hour was just working. What annoys me is the pricing model. The plan includes a pool of usage, and in a heavy week you either wait or pay more, and the dashboard does not make it obvious which model ate the budget. The agent panel is capable but eager; asked to fix one file it will happily touch four, so I keep it closed and use the terminal agent for that kind of work. Updates arrive weekly and now and then one of them breaks an extension until the extension catches up.

Who it is for

Anyone already on VS Code who wants a model in the editor without learning a new tool. The free tier is enough to find out whether tab completion changes how you type. Skip it if you live in a JetBrains IDE or in Vim and are happy there; the gain is not worth a switch. And if you mostly delegate whole tasks to an agent, a terminal tool does that better than the panel.