Cursor

Cursor is an AI-native code editor built on top of VS Code, designed to accelerate software development by deeply integrating large language models into the editing experience. Unlike traditional editors that bolt on AI as an afterthought, Cursor treats AI as a first-class participant in the coding workflow — from inline completions to autonomous agents that can plan, implement, test, and ship features end to end.

At its core, Cursor provides what the team calls Agent mode: an AI that can read your codebase, search the web, write and run code, review pull requests, and operate in parallel across multiple tasks. Developers can hand off a feature description and Cursor's agent will explore relevant files, generate a plan, and execute it — surfacing the work for human review rather than requiring step-by-step guidance.

The editor also includes Tab, an intelligent autocomplete system that goes beyond single-line suggestions to predict multi-line edits based on the surrounding context and recent changes. This is paired with a Composer interface (now labeled Agents in the UI) where developers can have a conversation with the model while it modifies files across the project.

Cloud Agents extend this further: Cursor can spin up agents that operate on their own virtual machines — browsing, writing, running tests, and deploying to staging — then returning a walkthrough of what was built. This positions Cursor closer to an autonomous engineering assistant than a simple copilot.

Cursor also integrates across the tools developers already use. It connects to GitHub for PR reviews, Slack for team collaboration, and ships a CLI for terminal-based workflows. A Marketplace lets teams share and discover custom extensions.

Compared to alternatives like GitHub Copilot, Cursor goes significantly further in agentic capabilities. Copilot is primarily a completion and chat layer; Cursor's agents can operate the full development loop. Compared to Windsurf (another VS Code fork with agentic features), Cursor has broader enterprise adoption — customers include Stripe, OpenAI, Nvidia, Figma, and Datadog — and a more mature cloud agent offering. For teams already on VS Code, the migration path is straightforward since Cursor inherits the same extension ecosystem and keybindings.

The editor is particularly well-suited for teams building complex, multi-file applications where the cost of context-switching between editor and AI chat is high. By keeping AI planning and execution inside the editor itself, Cursor reduces that friction significantly.