Yeah, this is what I don't get. How is Cursor that much better than Aider? When you have a great, free, open source tool, why would an investor pump money into Cursor?
https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html
Furthermore many IDEs have a plug-in for Aider.
Is Cursor open source? If not, I expect it to be buggier in the long run. And less featureful.
It seriously has no moat.
Would a simple VSCode plugin for Aider not be able to do that? I haven't tried it out, but Aidermacs (https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs) is an Emacs plugin that supposedly mimics some of Cursor's feature - but by using Aider.
I'm not saying Cursor is bad or anything. It may well be as good as Aider or a bit better. But it's not vastly better. If you had $1M to spare, would you risk investing in Cursor? Especially knowing that open source solutions are as good or at worst not far behind?
In the long run, some open source solution (Aider or something else) is going to eat Cursor's lunch.
BTW, I too initially wanted something that worked in my IDE. Then I just gave Aider a try and realized I prefer it being an external tool.
Locking down Aider will result in backlash and driving all potential users to cursor/windsurf.
Because Aider is open its capabilities will develop faster than Cursor's and thus as soon as people start charging for Cursor everyone will switch to Aider.
Cursor has no moat.