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EntryTop pick

Cursor

An AI IDE built on VS Code. Completion, chat, the agent, and your code live in one window, and every change arrives as a diff.

Last reviewed
Website
cursor.com

Good for

  • Collaborating with AI while reading code, accepting or reverting each change as you go
  • VS Code users who want to move to an AI IDE with almost no migration cost
  • Day-to-day small iterations: styling, small features, bug fixes

Not for

  • Embedding an agent in scripts or CI (a CLI fits better)
  • Budget-sensitive teams that need predictable costs should evaluate the pricing model first

Cursor is the most widely used AI IDE today. It is a fork of VS Code, so extensions, keybindings, and settings mostly carry over and switching costs almost nothing.

Why it is our top pick

  • The fastest feedback loop. Tab completion predicts the next few lines you will change, and chat and agent edits appear as diffs in the file you are looking at. Accepting, rejecting, or rolling back is one click. For people who code a little, it is the most intuitive way to understand what the AI is doing.
  • Complete context features. It reads AGENTS.md in the project root directly. Rules that should apply only to certain folders or file types go in .cursor/rules/ as .mdc files with frontmatter.
  • MCP support. Connect browsers, databases, documentation search, and other external capabilities to the agent.

Trade-offs to know

  • Rule files need the right format. Rules in .cursor/rules/ must be .mdc files with frontmatter; plain .md files are ignored. The old single-file .cursorrules is no longer in the official docs, so do not use it in new projects.
  • Rules only apply in Cursor. Put instructions that every tool should follow in AGENTS.md, and keep .mdc files for Cursor-specific, scoped rules.

Getting started

  1. Download it from the website; on first launch you can import your VS Code settings and extensions.
  2. Put an AGENTS.md in the project root.
  3. Save the souvenir below as .cursor/rules/project.mdc and adapt it to your project.
Souvenir

Take it home to your AI

Drop this .cursor/rules/project.mdc into your project, or paste it straight to your AI coding assistant.

.cursor/rules/project.mdc
---
description: Project-wide conventions: scope of changes, verification, and things to avoid
alwaysApply: true
---

- AGENTS.md in the project root is the source of truth for instructions shared by all tools; this file only adds Cursor-specific conventions.
- Handle one task at a time. Say which files you will change before editing.
- Run `pnpm check` after every change; if it fails, fix it instead of skipping or weakening assertions.
- Before adding a dependency, check whether the project already has a library that does the job, and explain why.
- Do not touch lockfiles other than `pnpm-lock.yaml`, and never hand-edit generated code.

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    Rules

    Tool-specific rules that apply only to certain folders or file types, covering local conventions that do not belong in AGENTS.md.

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    AGENTS.md

    A README for AI coding agents. One Markdown file in the repository root that almost every tool reads.