App Details

Summary

Cursor is an AI-powered IDE built to significantly speed up software development.

Screenshots

Description

Cursor aims to be more than just a text editor with AI add-ons; it's designed as an "AI-first" environment where artificial intelligence is a core part of how you work. It tries to understand your coding style and the specific rules of your project to give you more personalized and accurate help. How it Works: Cursor uses powerful AI models (like those from OpenAI and Anthropic) to assist developers. Here’s a general idea of how it works: Deep Codebase Understanding: Cursor can scan and "understand" your entire project (all your code files). This helps the AI give you suggestions and make changes that make sense in the context of your whole application. Natural Language Interaction: You can give Cursor instructions or ask it questions about your code in plain English. For example, you can ask it to "refactor this function to be more efficient" or "explain what this piece of code does." Iterative Editing & Generation: The AI can generate new code from scratch based on your descriptions or suggest changes to your existing code. You can review these suggestions (often shown as differences, or "diffs," to your current code) and accept or ask for further modifications. Contextual Awareness: Cursor allows you to provide specific context to the AI, such as particular files, folders, or even documentation, to make its assistance more relevant. Key Features: AI Chat (Ctrl+L or Cmd+L): A chat panel where you can ask questions about your codebase, get explanations, generate code snippets, or ask for help with debugging. It's aware of the files you're working on. Inline Editing & Generation (Ctrl+K or Cmd+K): Select a piece of code (or an empty space) and press this shortcut to open a small prompt. You can ask the AI to change the selected code, add to it, or generate new code in that spot. This is useful for quick edits, refactoring, or asking "quick questions" about a code snippet. "Agent" or "Composer" (Ctrl+I or Cmd+I for multi-file edits): This is for more complex tasks. The AI "agent" can help you make changes across multiple files, create new files and folders, and perform larger-scale refactoring based on your instructions. It tries to understand the overall goal and break it down. Advanced Autocompletion ("Tab"): Cursor predicts not just the next word or line, but potentially a whole series of edits or code blocks you might want to write next. It uses its understanding of your project to make these suggestions. Codebase Indexing: Cursor can create an "index" of your entire project. This helps the AI quickly find relevant information and understand relationships between different parts of your code when you ask questions or request changes. Context Management (e.g., @ Symbols, .cursorrules): You can use @ symbols in the chat to refer to specific files (@file_name.py) or folders to focus the AI's attention. You can create a .cursorrules file in your project to give the AI specific instructions or style guides to follow for that project (e.g., "Always write comments for functions"). Error Correction and Debugging Assistance: The AI can help you find and fix bugs in your code by suggesting corrections or explaining error messages. Some features aim to automatically find potential bugs in your changes. AI-Generated Commit Messages: Cursor can suggest commit messages for your code changes, saving you time. VS Code Heritage: Since it's based on VS Code, you can use most of your favorite VS Code extensions and themes, and the interface will feel familiar if you've used VS Code before. Multiple AI Models: Cursor often allows you to choose between different powerful AI models to use for its features. Privacy Mode: Offers options where your code is not stored remotely, and the company highlights its SOC 2 certification for security practices. Target Audience: Cursor is designed for software developers of all levels who want to leverage AI to become more productive. This includes: Individual developers working on personal projects. Professional developers in teams working on large and complex codebases. Those who want AI deeply integrated into their editor for tasks ranging from simple autocompletion to complex, multi-file refactoring and code generation. In summary, Cursor positions itself as a highly advanced, AI-native code editor that aims to be a "power tool" for developers, allowing them to work much faster and more efficiently by having an intelligent AI assistant deeply embedded in their coding workflow.