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Comment by davidgomes | Hacker News Reader

1. Cursor is multi-model, meaning you can use at least a dozen different models.

2. Cursor's UI allows you to edit files, and even have the good old auto-complete when editing code.

3. Cursor's VSCode-based IDE is still around! I still love using it daily.

4. Cursor also has a CLI.

5. Perhaps more importantly, Cursor has a Cloud platform product with automations, extremely long-lived agents and lots of other features to dispatch agents to work on different things at the same time.

Disclaimer: I'm a product engineer at Cursor!

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I hope this comes off as constructive criticism, but I'm confused about what cursor is now.

Cursor is an IDE and an agentic interface and a cli tool and a platform that all work locally and and in the cloud and in the browser and supports dozens of different models.

I don't know how to use the thing anymore, or what the thing actually is.

it sounds like you described it pretty well!

I'm having the same issue, as a former Cursor user and current Claude Code addict. CC is a very clear mental model. So is "agent in your IDE," like Cursor used to be and Xcode is now. The advantage of my current setup is that it's the terminal and Xcode, just as it has been for over 20 years.

I applaud Cursor for experimenting with design, and seeing if there are better ways of collaborating with agents using a different type of workspace. But at the moment, it's hard to even justify the time spent kicking the tires on something new, closed source and paid.

Let me give this a shot:

Cursor was the tool you use to pair program with AI. Where the AI types the code, and you direct it as you go along. This is a workflow where you work in code and you end up with something fundamentally correct to your standards.

Claude Code is the tool you use if you want to move one abstraction layer up - use harness, specs, verifications etc. to nail down the thing such that the only task left is type in the code - a thing AI does well. This is a workflow where the correctness depends on a lot of factors, but the idea is to abstract one level up from code. Fundamentally, it would be successful if you don't need to look at code at all.

I think there is not enough data to conclusively say which of these two concepts is better, even taking into account some trajectory of model development.

I do feel that any reason I have for installing Cursor is that I want to do workflow 1, rather than workflow 2. Cause I have a pretty comprehensive setup of claude code (or opencode, or whatevs) and I think it does everything you list here.

So, as a product engineer, you probably wanna mention why it matters that Cursor UI allows you to edit files with auto-complete.

I would switch to Cursor 3 in a heartbeat if it supported Claude Agent SDK (w/ Claude Max subscription usage) and/or Codex the way that similar tools like Conductor do

And I would happily pay a seat based subscription fee or usage fees for cloud agents etc on top of this

Unfortunately very locked into these heavily subsidized subscription plans right now but I think from a product design and vision standpoint you guys are doing the best work in this space right now

Is there going to be any more development on the frontier of cursor tab completion and features like that (more focused on helping engineer's with llm's for complex tasks) since I feel this is the main reason I dont use claude code or codex. I want to be writing the code, since I want performant, small, codebases that I understand (I am writing eBPF stuff, so agentic coding doesnt work that well)

Computer use in the cloud for me is THE killer feature.

Can you elaborate on how you are using it?

Basically set it up like a developer local env, then it just runs like an "openclaw" - with full control over its own env, with a browser, a shell, access to the local DB (e.g. install a local postgres). You basically get a video of the feature, screenshots, and it can also actually test itself, like a developer, clicking in the browser to test the feature. Game changer.

vscode + claude code extension has everything you listed that actually matters

You can use almost any model with Claude Code.

that doesnt make sense. how?

Here's how to use MiniMax v2.7 for example: https://platform.minimax.io/docs/token-plan/claude-code

You just add this to your ~/.claude/settings.json:

  {
    "env": {
      "DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER": "1",
      "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://api.minimax.io/anthropic",
      "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "YOUR_SECRET_KEY",
      "API_TIMEOUT_MS": "3000000",
      "CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC": 1,
      "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
      "ANTHROPIC_SMALL_FAST_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
      "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
      "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed",
      "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL": "MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed"
    }
  }

ah 'almost' . i want to use codex.

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