3 weeks ago pair programming with Cursor in "Ask" mode and ignoring all agents was the most productive I could get with these tools.

Since then I've noticed this triple working really well:

1. Ask mode Cursor for my main track of development

2. o3 for learning about or checking up on approaches when more rigor is needed

3. Delegating parallel tasks to claude code on a separate machine

* small work I can describe in <3 sentences

* parallel debugging / explaining running at the same time I'm trying to figure something out to cross check work or preemptively give me some new ideas on debugging

* starting on bigger work that I'll mostly need to throw away and do myself but I'm going to procrastinate otherwise

Putting delegations somewhere else is key because I don't want my local environment to be polluted with a separate task.