I could be wrong about this, but it feels like Cursor is less and less compelling with better models and better CLI tools popping up. Are the plan limits generous enough that it's worth a spin?
Again, I haven't used Cursor in a while, I'm mostly posting this hoping for Cunningham's Law to take effect :)
Cursor was good for a little while until VSCode opened up the APIs for AI editing. Now Copilot is really good and other extensions (specifically Kilo Code) are doing things so much better!
I am seeing a lot of folks talking about maintaining a good "Agent Loop" for doing larger tasks. It seems like Kilo Code has figured it out completely for me. Using the Orchestrator mode I'm able to accomplish really big and complex tasks without having to design an agent loop or hand crafting context. It switches between modes and accomplishes the tasks. My AGENTS.md file is really minimal like "write test for changes and make small commits"
Why waste precious milliseconds typing complete sentences to your AI coding assistant? With autocomplete in the prompt box, we've solved the most pressing problem facing developers today: prompt fatigue.
Gone are the days of exhausting yourself by typing full requests like "refactor this function to use async/await." Now, simply type "refac—" and let our AI predict that you want an AI to refactor your code.
Nice to see the image files being read without having to paste them and team rules. Cursor has been extremely helpful the last few months but increasingly more expensive. I spent almost 300 last month and had a lot of frustrating experiences so now I’m transitioning to Claude code in VS code.
Anyone have good recommendations for plugins integrating things like LM Studio or Ollama into Visual Studio or Jetbrains IDEs? I'd like to do more local AI processing on code bases instead of always relying on outside providers, but a lot of these things like Copilot and Cursor seem so well integrated into the IDE.
Copilot in VSCode supports local models through Ollama as well. Not sure about Copilot in Visual Studio. That's one of the most annoying things is VS is always behind VSCode in terms of Copilot features.
How do I get to the point of choosing model API providers (and configure my own) without doing any kind of sign in with Copilot though? I'm looking for everything be offline and not affiliated with some external service at all, even if some free tier.
I wish cursor would let you see how much usage in terms of $$ you have done for your month. Its really hard to see in the dashboard the individual charges tokens, but then there is no cumulative. I haven't been able to find a way to see how much of my included usage is being used besides downloading the csv and manually summing. They just give you a very unhelpful "You will use your included credits by X date"
I suppose this is by design so you don't know how much you have left and will need to buy more credits.
I'd love to hear from folks who mainly use Claude Code on why they prefer it and how they compare. It seems to be the most popular option here in HN, or at least the most frequently mentioned, and I never quite got why.
I always preferred the deep IDE integration that Cursor offers. I do use AI extensively for coding, but as a tool in the toolbox, it's not always the best in every context, and I see myself often switching between vibe coding and regular coding, with various levels of hand-holding. And I do also like having access to other AI providers, I have used various Claude models quite a lot, but they are not the be-all-end-all. I often got better results with o3 and now GPT-5 Thinking, even if they are slower, it's good to be able to switch and test.
I always felt that the UX of tools like Claude Code encourage you to blindly do everything through AI, it's not as seamless to dig-in and take more control when it makes sense to do so. That being said, they are very similar now, they all constantly copy each other. I suppose for many it's just inertia as well, simply about which one they tried first and what they are subscribed to, to an extent that is the case for me too.
You can just use the official Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Gemini extensions on VS Code. You get diffs just like in Cursor now. The performance of these models can vary wildly depending on the agent harness they're on.
The official tools won't necessarily give you the best performance, but they're a safer bet for now. This is merely anecdotal as I haven't bothered to check rigorously, but I and others online have found that GPT-5-Codex is worse in Cursor than in the official CLI/extension/web UI.
I use Cursor because I found their autocomplete to be the best option at the time. That seemed to be the consensus at one point too from bits of research I did.
Do people think there are better autocomplete options available now? Is it a case of just using a particular model for autocomplete in whatever IDE you want to use?
Right. Yesterday I tried a simple task that just adds Required[] notation to all class fields. After making the change on one field, Cursor allows me to press tabs and update all other fields. VSCode doesn't understand what I was trying to do after the first operation, which is surprisingly bad (no improvement after months). Also I'm not in favor of the conversational experience of claude code or other CLIs for such trivial task.
I'd be happy to know what else can provide a better user experience than Cursor.
Disclaimer: I get enterprise level subscriptions to these services via my employer. I personally don't pay for them and never consider their cost, if that matters.
I got into Cursor a little late, went really heavy on it, and see myself using it less and less as I go back to VSCode.
1) The most useful thing about Cursor was always state management of agent edits: Being able roll back to previous states after some edits with the click of a button, or reapply changes, and preview edits, etc. But weirdly, it seems like they never recognized this differentiator, and indeed it remains a bit buggy, and some crucial things (like mass-reapply after a rollback) never got implemented.
2) Adding autocomplete to the prompt box gives me suspicion they somehow still do not understand best practices in using AI to write code. It is more crucial than ever to be clear in your mind what you want to do in a codebase, so that you can recognize when AI is deviating from that path. Giving the LLM more and earlier opportunities to create deviation is a terrible idea.
3) Claude Code was fine in CLI and has a nearly-identical extension pane now too. For the same price, I seem to get just as much usage, in addition to a Claude subscription.
I think Cursor will lose because models were never their advantage and they do not seem to really be thought leaders on LLM-driven software development.
I tried vanilla vs code again three weeks ago. The tab complete was so slow and gave such poor results that I had to crawl back to Cursor after not even a full week. Cursor is sooo fast and useful in comparison.
> Claude Code was fine in CLI and has a nearly-identical extension pane now too.
One of us is wrong here. Last I checked, the extension pane was a command line, that doesn't use macOS keybindings, reimplements common controls, uses monospaced text for prose, etc.
I don't mind particularly about the last two but 'cmd A' on my Mac highlight all the text in the Claude Code user interface, rather than the text in the text box, is annoying.
> Adding autocomplete to the prompt box gives me suspicion they somehow still do not understand best practices in using AI to write code. It is more crucial than ever to be clear in your mind what you want to do in a codebase, so that you can recognize when AI is deviating from that path. Giving the LLM more and earlier opportunities to create deviation is a terrible idea.
Agreed 100%
Any time there's LLM auto complete on the prompt (chatgpt has done this too!) I find it horribly distracting and it often makes me completely lose track of what I had in mind, especially on more difficult tasks.
I really don't understand Cursor's 30 billion dollars valuation (half of Antropic). I use it, it's not a bad tool by any means but it's so buggy from version to version. Latest bug I had, it completely stopped keeping my zsh state in the terminal, I had to downgrade.
And honestly, I'm not that sure what secret sauce is worth 30 billion dollars? The agent loop? Others can do that? The autocomplete?
Off topic, but does anyone understand why Apple’s reader mode is so bad? This post is an example of reader mode not displaying section titles. I see this pretty frequently, even in my own blog, and haven’t been able to figure out hires to beat its flawed logic.
Was spending a lot with cursor switching between sonnet and opus 4.1s like 1500 to $2k a month. Was doing a lot of tabs in parallel of course. Output was like 5k lines on Good day. (Lines not the best measurement) But a yard stick against feature testing and rework.
Now with gpt-5-codex and codex vs code ext .. getting through up to 20k line changes in a day again lots of parallel jobs; but codex allows for less rework.
The job of the "engineer" has changed a lot. At 5k lines I was not reviewing every detail but it was possible to skim over what had changed. At 20k it's more looking at logs performance / arch & observation of features less code is reviewed.
Maybe soon just looking at outcomes. Things are moving quickly.
"Commands now execute in a secure, sandboxed environment. If you’re on allowlist mode, non-allowlisted commands will automatically run in a sandbox with read/write access to your workspace and no internet access."
Since finding out a Claude Code extension to run on VS Code/cursor, I use it less and less. With git and Claude Code, rolling back and forth is a breeze. Cursor is cooked, as the cool kids say now days. They need to adapt and find a moat.
Cursor will soon be irrelevant. The one thing that it excels at is autocomplete, and that's ironically the one feature they bought out and integrated (Supermaven) instead of developing themselves, which sums it up quite well. It's still making good money based on having been first to market , but it's market share has been in freefall for ages, only accelerating.
The agentic side is nothing special and it's expensive for what you get. Even if you're the exact target audience - don't want CLI, want multiple frontier models to choose from for a fixed monthly price - Augment is both more competent and ends up cheaper.
Then for everyone else who is fine with a single model, Claude Code and now Codex are obviously better choices. Or those who want cheaper and faster through open weights models, there's Opencode and Kilo.
The mystery is that the other VC backed ones seemingly don't care or just don't put enough resources into cracking the autocomplete code, as many are still staying with Cursor purely for that - or were until CC became mainstream. Windsurf was making strides but now that's dead.
> and that's ironically the one feature they bought out and integrated (Supermaven) instead of developing themselves
What? Cursor bought Supermaven last November and I have been using their much superior (compared to GH Copilot) completion since maybe early last year so it does not add up.
Like many others I was very pro cursor a year or so ago, but unfortunately since then 3 significant things have severely impacted its appeal:
VS Code accepted the challenge and upped its game.
Claude Code changed the game.
Cursor's own heavy value decrease (always part of the strategy but poorly communicated and managed) hit Cursor users hard when the cheap premium tokens honeymoon ended in recent months.
Existing users are disappointed, potential new users no longer see it as the clear class leader, because it isn't.
Is it possible to run Cursor entirely with local models? My Mac can comfortably run relatively massive models. I would experiment so much more with AI in my codebases knowing that I won't slam into a brick wall due to quotas, connection issues, etc.
Great job ya'll! Admittedly I haven't tried Claude Code but that's because I think Cursor is the bees knees! I do agree with the people posting that the 500 requests pricing approach is kinda rough, but I can see how you're trying to figure this out as a company that doesn't own a frontier model like Anthropic. Anyway, great job! _Love_ the new Agent View. Fun to see you guys hashing out this UI/UX release by release.
47 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] threadAgain, I haven't used Cursor in a while, I'm mostly posting this hoping for Cunningham's Law to take effect :)
I am seeing a lot of folks talking about maintaining a good "Agent Loop" for doing larger tasks. It seems like Kilo Code has figured it out completely for me. Using the Orchestrator mode I'm able to accomplish really big and complex tasks without having to design an agent loop or hand crafting context. It switches between modes and accomplishes the tasks. My AGENTS.md file is really minimal like "write test for changes and make small commits"
Gone are the days of exhausting yourself by typing full requests like "refactor this function to use async/await." Now, simply type "refac—" and let our AI predict that you want an AI to refactor your code.
It's AI all the way down, baby.
Caught Claude 4.5 via Cursor yesterday trying to set a password to “password” on an outward facing EC2 service.
I suppose this is by design so you don't know how much you have left and will need to buy more credits.
I always preferred the deep IDE integration that Cursor offers. I do use AI extensively for coding, but as a tool in the toolbox, it's not always the best in every context, and I see myself often switching between vibe coding and regular coding, with various levels of hand-holding. And I do also like having access to other AI providers, I have used various Claude models quite a lot, but they are not the be-all-end-all. I often got better results with o3 and now GPT-5 Thinking, even if they are slower, it's good to be able to switch and test.
I always felt that the UX of tools like Claude Code encourage you to blindly do everything through AI, it's not as seamless to dig-in and take more control when it makes sense to do so. That being said, they are very similar now, they all constantly copy each other. I suppose for many it's just inertia as well, simply about which one they tried first and what they are subscribed to, to an extent that is the case for me too.
The official tools won't necessarily give you the best performance, but they're a safer bet for now. This is merely anecdotal as I haven't bothered to check rigorously, but I and others online have found that GPT-5-Codex is worse in Cursor than in the official CLI/extension/web UI.
Do people think there are better autocomplete options available now? Is it a case of just using a particular model for autocomplete in whatever IDE you want to use?
Disclaimer: I get enterprise level subscriptions to these services via my employer. I personally don't pay for them and never consider their cost, if that matters.
1) The most useful thing about Cursor was always state management of agent edits: Being able roll back to previous states after some edits with the click of a button, or reapply changes, and preview edits, etc. But weirdly, it seems like they never recognized this differentiator, and indeed it remains a bit buggy, and some crucial things (like mass-reapply after a rollback) never got implemented.
2) Adding autocomplete to the prompt box gives me suspicion they somehow still do not understand best practices in using AI to write code. It is more crucial than ever to be clear in your mind what you want to do in a codebase, so that you can recognize when AI is deviating from that path. Giving the LLM more and earlier opportunities to create deviation is a terrible idea.
3) Claude Code was fine in CLI and has a nearly-identical extension pane now too. For the same price, I seem to get just as much usage, in addition to a Claude subscription.
I think Cursor will lose because models were never their advantage and they do not seem to really be thought leaders on LLM-driven software development.
One of us is wrong here. Last I checked, the extension pane was a command line, that doesn't use macOS keybindings, reimplements common controls, uses monospaced text for prose, etc.
I don't mind particularly about the last two but 'cmd A' on my Mac highlight all the text in the Claude Code user interface, rather than the text in the text box, is annoying.
Agreed 100%
Any time there's LLM auto complete on the prompt (chatgpt has done this too!) I find it horribly distracting and it often makes me completely lose track of what I had in mind, especially on more difficult tasks.
Note that CC introduced this yesterday, it’s very fast and good.
Now with gpt-5-codex and codex vs code ext .. getting through up to 20k line changes in a day again lots of parallel jobs; but codex allows for less rework.
The job of the "engineer" has changed a lot. At 5k lines I was not reviewing every detail but it was possible to skim over what had changed. At 20k it's more looking at logs performance / arch & observation of features less code is reviewed.
Maybe soon just looking at outcomes. Things are moving quickly.
"Commands now execute in a secure, sandboxed environment. If you’re on allowlist mode, non-allowlisted commands will automatically run in a sandbox with read/write access to your workspace and no internet access."
The agentic side is nothing special and it's expensive for what you get. Even if you're the exact target audience - don't want CLI, want multiple frontier models to choose from for a fixed monthly price - Augment is both more competent and ends up cheaper.
Then for everyone else who is fine with a single model, Claude Code and now Codex are obviously better choices. Or those who want cheaper and faster through open weights models, there's Opencode and Kilo.
The mystery is that the other VC backed ones seemingly don't care or just don't put enough resources into cracking the autocomplete code, as many are still staying with Cursor purely for that - or were until CC became mainstream. Windsurf was making strides but now that's dead.
What? Cursor bought Supermaven last November and I have been using their much superior (compared to GH Copilot) completion since maybe early last year so it does not add up.
source?
VS Code accepted the challenge and upped its game.
Claude Code changed the game.
Cursor's own heavy value decrease (always part of the strategy but poorly communicated and managed) hit Cursor users hard when the cheap premium tokens honeymoon ended in recent months.
Existing users are disappointed, potential new users no longer see it as the clear class leader, because it isn't.
Legacy tech, but a great idea before models got good enough to use via CLI.