Recently they also seem to have made big changes that makes Cursor worse for editing code by hand. I'm not sure what they are trying to do, but it doesn't feel like vscode fork anymore. I'm starting to consider alternatives.

To answer your question though, to me your workflow seems cumbersome. Cursor is more integrated and more frictionless.

Cursor has two “modes” agent and ide.

In agent mode it’s horrible for editing files etc but better if you are juggling multiple chats

I felt the same, but I realized, that if you vibe code more, the changes make sense. Simple example:

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.

Cursor has two benefits

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.

You can use VSCode / Zed, run any CLI coding agent in the integrated terminal and review changes using the Git working tree diff view the IDE offers. Extensions seemingly give more ergonomy, like diffs of agent changes separate from Git, or option to comment on specific file or section, but I found out that agent CLIs don't really need that today -- most of the time they know what I mean without needing to explicitly point at code locations.

Can't VS Code extensions solve your use case?

They're not as good. I've tried all the options available a couple months ago, and none of them feel nearly as polished as Cursor. For one thing, Cursor Tab is just far better than any other "next edit" prediction I've used. I also happen to like their agent UI the most, but they don't support ACP, so you can't use it with Claude Code, which was a deal-breaker for me.

These days I've switched to Zed, which is good enough (and wicked fast), but I still miss Cursor as an IDE.

I tried the codex extension many months ago but I didn't like it. I use mostly the Codex App, or sometimes the Codex TUI inside the IDE terminal.

The Claude plugin for VSC is amazing and basically "solves programming" for me. It's the primary way that I write code now; I even stopped using Claude Code.

You can use Intellij Ides, at least free ones.

I'm in the same boat as gp.

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.

Cursor as an editor/IDE when you take away LLM features is just a worse VSCode (1) lacking some useful first party features, e.g. highlight of staged changes; (2) where a significant number of extensions can’t be found — yes, I know you can manually install vsix but that’s a pain. I moved back to VSCode once I no longer need Cursor’s (top notch at the time) auto complete.

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.

I don't think it offers any. I got tired of switching between Codex and Claude plus I wanted to start using glm and kimi so I switch to pi. Then I got tired of VSCode eating up battery and RAM so I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore since most code is not written by hand and if you know how to use it well it was only maybe 10% less efficient than VSCode to begin with. I am not sure why a heavy desktop application would be better than nvim + pi in terminal which are both super extensible via vibecoding and very light on resources.

Huh, never thought about that 2nd point - I'm also transitioning to pi, but didn't think to change to neovim as well. I guess your logic holds for claude code users as well though.

How do you diff ?

Unless by "text editor" you mean Neovim or Emacs ?

Sounds like on GitHub. That's how I do it too.

I’m surprised. That’s nowhere what you would get out of a tool like GitLens or Sublime Merge.

Diffing through a web interface offered by GitHub or Bitbucket is such a narrow window into changes.

I was running `git diff` before so I'm not sure what I'm missing I guess.

git diff

Cursor Tab is nice when you're hand-editing stuff. Not sure it's worth $20 though. I'd totally buy and forget a $5 Cursor subscription just for Cursor Tab.

The $20 price point is just too competitive now and I'd rather use the Claude/Codex plugin over Cursor's agentic coding sidebar.

cheap cursor tab on its own would be so nice

Look at Cursor CLI: https://cursor.com/cli

Design mode: https://cursor.com/blog/design-mode

It removes money from your pocket into theirs faster than Claude will take money out of your pocket and into theirs. I was a Windsurf then Cursor user and even provided product feedback to the Cursor team on various aspects of their product but the costs for using it killed the value.

> faster than Claude will take money out of your pocket and into theirs

Damn, and I thought Anthropic was fast.

Code and reasoning generated by Opus/Fable via Cursor seems to be quite better than Claude Code's for the same prompt.

Does that mean you’re paying api prices + cursor markup (?), or can you somehow piggyback on your Claude subscription? Fable via the API is really too expensive

The way they spin up multiple Composer 2.5 before sending it over to the model of your choice is nice.

I'm also confused about Cursor. I use Zed. It seems like whatever Cursor has is pure commodity and yet it's worth billions?

You can use Cursor CLI, it's a terminal agent, just like Claude Code and Codex. I use it sometimes, I haven't opened the actual Cursor IDE in ages.

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.

Zed lets you use Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, etc. all through the same UI. Like you, I use that to cross validate using models from different providers and switch over to GLM 5.2 when I exceed my Claude Code limit.

I have tried multiple times to switch from Cursor to VSCode + command line tools or VSCode plugin for Claude, but it just doesn't work as well as Cursor itself.

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.

Cursor in agent mode is the same thing as claude code and codex. And now Grok 4.5 included into subscription. It gives you more value, since grok is cheaper and faster version of the Opus.

I also want to believe that Cursor team working on harnesses for much longer then openAI and Anthropic can deliver better results overall. Claude code is being pretty much vibe-coded slop doesn’t give a feel of a good product.

Look into the /stage-chapters skill for local review. It groups large edits logically into "chapters" (think individual Claude plan steps) that you can review one at a time, and it's local.

I'm surprised that their biggest feature has not been mentioned: The permissions model is much less noisy in Cursor.

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.

How is that different from claude’s “auto” permission mode?

I was not aware of auto mode in Claude. In fact, it looks like Claude had it before cursor. Cursor has workspace scoping in a way that Claude does not seem to, but my comment above is mostly moot.

Easily switching between models. Re: the local read/edit case, it's a bit more seamless than opening in a separate editor.

That's about it.