These days I “write” code with claude code and codex, and read/review it on GitHub. If I need to read it locally, I use a plain text editor.
Can someone help me understand what value cursor offers in 2026?
1) It's still an IDE. Because of pricing I mostly use Codex, but I always have a VSCode/Cursor IDE open, thus have to juggle between the two. Working directly in the IDE is more comfortable. For full on vibecoding that might be worse, but when you want to do a deep review of the changes, an IDE is way better than reading a diff on github.
2) It supports every model. It's often very helpful to try different models when you don't like the result of the first.
They seem to be doing their darndest to kill advantage #1. Even the command line "cursor ~/git" no longer opens an IDE in the ~/git folder but some random Chatgpt-esque interface that nobody asked for. Honestly, VS Code is a better "old Cursor" now than Cursor is.
#2 hasn't been much of an issue for me since Opus 4.5 came out. Anything the other models could do, Claude could do better. Of course things are starting to change now, and I've noticed Sol Ultra is specifically better at visual design stuff than Claude, but even that ~3% of cases I switch to GPT are still more easily solved with a cheap Codex sub than Cursor.
Also, Cursor really pushes you to use their agent stuff, I had to close/switch just to get to the goddamn code whenever I opened something in Cursor. VSCode is still happy to be an editor where code is centered for my review.
These days I've switched to Zed, which is good enough (and wicked fast), but I still miss Cursor as an IDE.
Damn, and I thought Anthropic was fast.
To answer your question though, to me your workflow seems cumbersome. Cursor is more integrated and more frictionless.
In agent mode it’s horrible for editing files etc but better if you are juggling multiple chats
Should the AI sidebar be on the left, or on the right? At some point they swapped them automatically, which was jarring (maybe a bug). But now I realize that if I'm not the one primarily writing code and navigating it, then I prefer agents in the "primary" position on the left (esp. if I have the browser on the left half of the screen, the agents are in the middle).
What annoys me the most about Cursor is the random stuff that breaks (due to its nature of VS Code fork).
The tab experience is still unparalleled. The cost might be worse than Codex/Claude sub, but they are all much, much, much cheaper than API pricing, so depends on your POV.
Every 30 seconds in claude you get a new, elaborate, contrived bash command that claude wants to run. It's some combination of 10 things you've already granted permission for, but this one is new!
Cursor's auto-review run mode fixes that https://cursor.com/docs/agent/security/run-modes
I know it's a compromise in security, but auto-review+sandboxing provides a much nicer out-of-the-box experience. I'm happily using Cursor + Composer 2.5/Opus for most tasks.
The $20 price point is just too competitive now and I'd rather use the Claude/Codex plugin over Cursor's agentic coding sidebar.
Especially if you are doing "remote" development through SSH. If you are doing stuff where you still have to write some parts of the code manually or you have to fix few things here and there that the AI outputs, you still need a real editor.
Unless by "text editor" you mean Neovim or Emacs ?
Diffing through a web interface offered by GitHub or Bitbucket is such a narrow window into changes.
That's about it.
The potential benefit of Cursor CLI (vs CC and Codex) is that you can easily between all major models (by Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, as well as Kimi K3 and GLM 5.2). I found it useful when reviewing work - e.g. I implement using Opus then review using Sol, etc. Models by different providers tend to have different perspective on things and they can find different issues with the code.