That sounds nice and I have the same pain, but not sure AGENT.md is the right abstraction either. After all, these models are indeed different and will respond differently even given the same prompting. Not to mention that different wrappers around those models have different capabilities.
e.g. maybe for CURSOR.md you just want to provide context and best practices without any tool-calling context (because you've found it doesn't do a great job of tool-calling), while for CLAUDE.md (for use with Claude Code) you might want to specify tools that are available to it (because it does a great job with tool calling).
Probably best if you have an AGENT.md that applies to all, and then the tools can also ingest their particular flavor in addition, which (if anything is in conflict) would trump the baseline AGENT file.
Yep, that's a peeve of mine. I've resorted to using AGENT.md, and aliasing Claude, Gemini, etc to a command that calls them with an initial instruction to read that file. But of course they will forget after some time.
The whole agentic coding via CLI experience could be much improved by:
- Making it easy to see what command I last issued, without having to scroll up through reams of output hunting for context
- Making it easy to spin up a proper sandbox to run sessions unattended
- Etc.
Maybe for code generation, what we actually need is a code generator that is itself deterministic but uses AI, instead of AI that does code generation.
Yes! I want an option to always add README.md to the context; It would force me to have a useful, up to date document about how to build, run, and edit my projects.
Ultimately if this stuff is actually intelligent it should be using the same sources of information that we intelligent beings use. Feels silly to have to have to jump through all these hoops to make it work today
FWIW at least with Claude and Jules on a project I have a decent setup where I put all of the real content in an agents.md and then use “@agents.md” in CLAUDE.md. If all of the tools supported these kinds of context references in markdown it wouldn’t be that hard to have a single source of truth for memory files.
Yeah I suspect some of these providers will become Microsoft in the '90s type bully holdouts on implementing the emerging conventions. But ultimately with CLI interface you have workarounds to all the major providers read in your system guidelines. But in an IDE - e.g. like MS had with VisualStudio - you more lock-in potential for your config files.
I'm at a point where I symlink differnet sets of docs to try to focus context so much I feel like maybe I need a git submodule with different branches of context I want. I left managing people to now manage AI
I really like the idea of standardizing on AGENT.md, although it's too bad it doesn't really work with the .cursor/rules/ approach of having several rules files that get included based on matching the descriptions or file globs in frontmatter. Then again, I'm not sure if any other agents support an approach like that, and in my experience Cursor isn't entirely predictable about which rules files it ends up including in the context.
I guess having links to supplementary rules files is an option, but I'm not sure which agents (if any) would work well with that.
I just wish the AGENTS.md standard wasn't a single file. I have a lot of smaller context documents that aren't applicable to every task, so I like to throw them into a folder (.ai/ or .agents/) and then selectively cat them together or tell the agent to read them.
I went from years of vscode to "Cursor is the future" to never using Cursor at all. Claude Code, even with new limits, is just too good. If I were to switch to gpt-5, why wouldn't I just use Codex? I'm struggling to understand the value of what they're presenting.
I find the Codex CLI to be the worst of the CLI tools I’ve used (including, but not limited to, Claude Code, Gemini, Aider).
There’s something about it that makes it clunky.
Haven’t tried Cursor CLI yet though.
Because iterating multiple sessions through multiple terminals is obviously more efficient and seamless than interacting thought a scuffed IDE side panel ui.
In my experience, it is much better at tool-calling, which is huge when we're talking about agentic coding. It also seems to do a better job of keeping things cleaning and not going off on tangents for anything that isn't accomplished in one shot.
I have had the exact opposite experience. Claude Code in any meaningful codebase for me gets stuck in loops of doing the wrong thing. Then when that doesn't work it deletes files and makes its own that don't have the problem it's encountering.
Cursor on the other hand, especially with GPT-5 today but typically with Sonnet 4.1, has been a workhorse at my company for months. I have never had Claude Code complete a meaningful ticket once. Even a small thing like fixing a small bug or updating the documentation on the site.
Would love any tips on how to make Claude Code not a complete waste of electricity.
Sure, you can have your LLM code with any JavaScript framework you want, as long as you don't mind it randomly dropping React code and React-isms in the middle of your app.
I really like the IDE. It makes enough mistakes that I need to be constantly testing and catching little errors. I’ll interrupt the flow often when it’s going down a path I don’t want it to. When using Codex, for example, it’s doing too much in the background that is harder to correct afterwards. Am I doing this wrong?
Holy moly. I did not see that coming, but it makes sense. I’m enjoying the terminal-based coding agents way more than I ever would have expected. I can keep one spinning in the background while I do #dayjob, and as a bonus I feel like a haX0r.
2025 is the year of the terminal, apparently?
For my prototype purposes, it’s great, and Claude code the most fun I’ve had with tech in a jillion years.
With all the frontier labs competing in this space now, and them letting you use your consumer subscription through the CLI, I don’t understand how the Cursor products will survive. Why pay an extra $X/mo when I can get this functionality included in the $Y/mo I’m already paying OAI/Anthropic/GOOG?
If Cursor can build the better UX for all the use-cases, mobile/desktop chatbot, assistant, in IDE coding agent, CLI coding agent, web-based container coding agent, etc.
In theory, they can spend all their resourcing on this, so you could assume they could have those be more polished.
If they win the market-share here, than the models are just commodity, Cursor lets you pick which ever is best at any given time.
In a sense, "users" are going to get locked in on the tooling. They learn the commands, configuration, and so on of Cursor, it's a higher cost for them to re-learn a different UX. Uninstalling and re-installing another app, plugin, etc. is annoying.
No, model providers are not going to let Cursor eat their pie. The biggest cost in AI is in developing LLM models and inference. Players incurring those costs will basically control this market.
I don't think we'll have more than 2 players. I think it's like AMD and Intel, the LLM is almost like providing hardware. The software that exposes the LLM capabilities to the user is the layer that will be able to differentiate.
The models are just going to be fighting performance/cost. And people will choose the best performance for their budget.
And that's ignoring how good local models are getting as well.
It's not that they'll have their launch eaten by Cursor, it's just that they can't be as focused on user experience when they're also laser focused on improving the models to stay competitive.
I think the complete opposite. I love the ux for claude code, but it would be better if it wasnt locked to a single vendor's model. It seems pretty clear to me that a vendor neutral product with a UX as good as Claude Code would be the clear winner.
I agree that cursor has to take an aggressive and differentiated approach to succeed, but they have the benefit of pushing each lab into a commodity.
I pay for Cursor and ChatGPT. I can imagine I’d pay for Gemini if I used an android. The chat bots (1) won’t keep the subscription competitive with APIs because the cost and usage models are different and (2) most chat bots today are more of a UX competition than model quality. And the only winners are ChatGPT and whatever integrated options the user has by default (Gemini, MSFT Copilot, etc).
Because you can always use the best model. Yesterday is was Claude Opus 4.1, today it's GPT-5. If you just were paying Anthropic you will be stuck with Claude.
I'm having trouble finding a use for this outside of virtualized unused environments. Why not instead give me a virtual machine that runs this in a confined storage space?
I would _never_ give an LLM access to any disk I own or control if it had anything more than read permissions
Why not? Have you ever actually used these things? The risk is incredibly low. I run claude code with zero permissions every day for hours. Never a problem.
I have (not an exhaustive list) SSH keys and sensitive repositories hanging out on my filesystem. I don't trust _myself_ with that, let alone an LLM, unless I'm running ollama or similar local nonsense with no net connectivity.
I'm a few degrees removed from an air gapped environment so obviously YMMV. Frankly I find the idea of an LLM writing files or being allowed to access databases or similar cases directly distasteful; I have to review the output anyway and I'll decide what goes to the relevant disk locations / gets run.
They don't have arbitrary access over your file system. They ask permission for doing most everything. Even reading files, they can't do that outside of the current working directory without permission.
Your obviously skilled, spending the money on a Claude only machine would pay for itself in less than three weeks. If I was your employer, it would be a no brainer.
i'm betting on cursor being the long-term best toolset.
1. with tight integration between cli, background agent, ide, github apps (e.g. bugbot), cursor will accommodate the end-to-end developer experience.
2. as frontier models internalize task routing, there won't be much that feels special about claude code anymore.
3. we should always promote low switching costs between model providers (by supporting independent companies), keeping incentives toward improving the models not ui/data/network lock-in.
> we should always promote low switching costs between model providers (by supporting independent companies), keeping incentives toward improving the models not ui/data/network lock-in
You’re underestimating the dollars at play here. With cursor routing all your tokens, they will become a foundation model play sooner than you may think
The code isn’t the valuable part. They know all the most common workflows and failure modes, allowing them to create better environments for training agentic models
cursor and 3rd party tools will, unless they make their own superior foundation model, will always have to fight the higher marginal cost battle. This is particularly bad insofar that they offer fixed pricing subscriptions. That means they’re going to have to employ more context saving tricks which are at odds with better performance.
If the cost economics result in Cursor holding, say, 20% fewer tokens in context versus model-provider coding agents, they will necessarily get worse performance, all things equal.
Unless Cursor offers something dramatically different outside of the basic agentic coding stack it’s hard to see why the market will converge to cursor.
Happy to short that bet as I think agentic harnesses will be molded along the RL training of the actual model. Tony + the suit created together. Why Claude in Claude Code became existential for Cursor, why cursor moved quick to go agentic and build up with OpenAI in big header line way here.
Fascinating to see how agents are redefining what IDEs are. This was not really the case in the chat AI era. But as autonomy increases, the traditional IDE UI becomes less important form of interaction.
I think those CLI tools have pretty good chance to create a new dev tools ecosystem. Creating a full featured language plugin (let alone a full IDE) for VSCode or Intellij is not for a faint-hearted, and cross IDE portability is limited. CLI tools + MCP can be a lot simpler, more composable and more portable.
IDE UI should shift to focusing on catching agentic problems early and obviously, and providing drop dead simple rollback strategies, parallel survival-of-the-fittest solution generation, etc
I think CLI is a good idea for now. Next abstraction seems to be Github PRs where someone (likely me) files an issue/feature, then I click a button, and the agent fixes the issue/feature. Github has talked about something similar, but surely it were a pain to figure out if it was GA and I had access to it given so many different variations they have called gh copilot. (PS: it exists, but not as smooth as I described: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agent... )
Flip your thinking around for a second and consider why an IDE is required for an agent that codes for you?
The IDE/editor is for me, the agent doesn't need it. That also means I am not forced to used whatever imperfect forked IDE the agent is implemented against.
Sure, but monitoring, reviewing and steering does not really require modern IDEs in their current form. Also, I'm sure agents can benefit from parts of IDE functionality (navigation, static analysis, integration with build tools, codebase indexing, ...), but they sure don't need the UI. And without UI those parts can become simpler, more composable and more portable (being compatible with multiple agent tools). IMO another way to think about CLI agentic coding tools as of new form of IDEs.
I end up using the VCS tooling (lazygit for me), but coding agents really need to be integrated with this review environment. We need an extra step where the agent will group its changes into logical units (database models in one commit, types in another, business logic in another, tests in another), rather than having to review per-file.
Programming has changed from writing code to reviewing/QAing and reprompting, but the tooling hasn't yet caught up with that workflow. We need Gerrit for coding agents, basically.
Many of these companies are realizing that mainline VSCode is a moat of sorts. I and many people I know won't use any of these that require forking VSCode.
With the benefit that you can also pull in people who don't like using VSCode such as people who use Jetbrains or terminal based code editors.
i dont think it actually does anything better than the chat window in the editor. its strictly worse tbh. it just lets you not be tied to a VSCode interface for editing.im sure Jetbrains diehards would very much appreciate this, but honestly i will find it hard to utilize given the fact Cursor's tab auto-complete is so amazing.
Can you pick thinking models with this or is that implied?
GPT-5 seems a bit slow so far (in terms of deciding and awareness). I’ve gone from waiting for a compiler, to waiting for assets to build to now waiting for an agent to decide what to do - progress I guess :)
is there a way to get it to display more information? its stuck not doing anything and i cant tell if that's because it timed out or it is running a script or it is thinking or what is even happening. sometimes it just does things without even giving any feedback at all. i dont know what it is thinking or what it is trying to do and i cant really see the output of the terminal commands it is running. it just pauses every once in a while and asks to run a command.
My first thought was, "meh, I already have Claude Code". But then I remembered my primary frustration with Claude Code. I need other LLMs to be able to validate Claude Code's assumptions and work. I need to do this in an automated way. Before Cursor CLI, I did not have a way to programmatically ask Cursor do this. It was very manual, very painful. But, now I can create a Claude Code agent that is a "cursor-specialist" that uses cursor cli to do all of that in an automated way.
Interesting, are you saying you would setup a Stop Hook in Claude Code that calls the Cursor CLI to have it validate and prompt Claude Code with further instructions?
Only if it would work. I think they miss a big opportunity here by (1) not caring about security at all, (2) trying to develop their own model and only make it available in the cloud.
Seriously Cursor. You can’t just write wrappers all your life. VSCode wrapper and now Gemini CLI wrapper. Can you make something from scratch for once? It’s as if they want an exit and they’re putting in minimum effort until that materializes.
When I saw this, the question which immediately came to mind was:
Who would turn loose arbitrary commands (content)
generated by an LLM onto their filesystem?
Then I saw the installation instructions, which are:
curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash
And it made sense.
Only those comfortable with installing software by downloading shell commands from an arbitrary remote web site and immediately executing them would use it.
So what then is the risk of running arbitrary file system modifications generated from a program installed via arbitrary shell commands? None more than what was accepted in order to install it.
Both are opaque, unreviewed, and susceptible to various well known attacks (such as a supply chain attack[0]).
I wonder when all of them will adopt AGENT.md and stop using gemini.md/claude.md/crush.md/summary.md/qwen.md
https://agent.md [redirect -> https://ampcode.com/AGENT.md] https://agent-rules.org
That sounds nice and I have the same pain, but not sure AGENT.md is the right abstraction either. After all, these models are indeed different and will respond differently even given the same prompting. Not to mention that different wrappers around those models have different capabilities.
e.g. maybe for CURSOR.md you just want to provide context and best practices without any tool-calling context (because you've found it doesn't do a great job of tool-calling), while for CLAUDE.md (for use with Claude Code) you might want to specify tools that are available to it (because it does a great job with tool calling).
Probably best if you have an AGENT.md that applies to all, and then the tools can also ingest their particular flavor in addition, which (if anything is in conflict) would trump the baseline AGENT file.
Yep, that's a peeve of mine. I've resorted to using AGENT.md, and aliasing Claude, Gemini, etc to a command that calls them with an initial instruction to read that file. But of course they will forget after some time.
The whole agentic coding via CLI experience could be much improved by:
- Making it easy to see what command I last issued, without having to scroll up through reams of output hunting for context - Making it easy to spin up a proper sandbox to run sessions unattended - Etc.
Maybe for code generation, what we actually need is a code generator that is itself deterministic but uses AI, instead of AI that does code generation.
I think most of them provide an option to change the default file, but it'll be really good if they all can switch to AGENT.md by default
Till then you can also use symlinks
there are issues opened in some repos for this
- Support "AGENT.md" spec + filename · Issue #4970 · google-gemini/gemini-cli
https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/4970#issu...
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/1091
Here for Claude
Every time I’ve ever read a {CLAUDE|GEMINI|QWEN}.md I’ve thought all this information could just be in CONTRIBUTING.md instead.
Yes! I want an option to always add README.md to the context; It would force me to have a useful, up to date document about how to build, run, and edit my projects.
You can include in your prompt for it to read the README!
Ultimately if this stuff is actually intelligent it should be using the same sources of information that we intelligent beings use. Feels silly to have to have to jump through all these hoops to make it work today
That's a more obvious (but less fun) name than what I've been using: ROBOTS.md with symlinks.
https://ampcode.com/AGENT.md#migration
they also suggest using symlinks for now
FWIW at least with Claude and Jules on a project I have a decent setup where I put all of the real content in an agents.md and then use “@agents.md” in CLAUDE.md. If all of the tools supported these kinds of context references in markdown it wouldn’t be that hard to have a single source of truth for memory files.
Same here each specific instruction file (vs code, cursor, etc.) just says read the AGENTS.md for instructions
Yeah I suspect some of these providers will become Microsoft in the '90s type bully holdouts on implementing the emerging conventions. But ultimately with CLI interface you have workarounds to all the major providers read in your system guidelines. But in an IDE - e.g. like MS had with VisualStudio - you more lock-in potential for your config files.
Yesterday, I was writing about a way I found to pass the same guideline documents into Claude, Gemini, and Aider CLI-coders: https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/case-studies/a...
Isn't think just a symlink?
I'm at a point where I symlink differnet sets of docs to try to focus context so much I feel like maybe I need a git submodule with different branches of context I want. I left managing people to now manage AI
I really like the idea of standardizing on AGENT.md, although it's too bad it doesn't really work with the .cursor/rules/ approach of having several rules files that get included based on matching the descriptions or file globs in frontmatter. Then again, I'm not sure if any other agents support an approach like that, and in my experience Cursor isn't entirely predictable about which rules files it ends up including in the context.
I guess having links to supplementary rules files is an option, but I'm not sure which agents (if any) would work well with that.
I just wish the AGENTS.md standard wasn't a single file. I have a lot of smaller context documents that aren't applicable to every task, so I like to throw them into a folder (.ai/ or .agents/) and then selectively cat them together or tell the agent to read them.
You can put them in subdirectories like CODEOWNERS files. https://ampcode.com/AGENT.md#multiple-agent-files
Agree. It's all English. That's the whole point of these tools.
Why are we purposely creating CLI dialects?
When they stop getting desperate for differentiation by spamming their brand advertising in your repo against your will.
Claude Code likes to add "attribution" in commit messages, which is just pure spam.
You can turn it off: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/settings#avai... `includeCoAuthoredBy: false`
Symlinks $AGENT.md to AGENT.md in your repo.
Thank you so much for this!
I went from years of vscode to "Cursor is the future" to never using Cursor at all. Claude Code, even with new limits, is just too good. If I were to switch to gpt-5, why wouldn't I just use Codex? I'm struggling to understand the value of what they're presenting.
I find the Codex CLI to be the worst of the CLI tools I’ve used (including, but not limited to, Claude Code, Gemini, Aider). There’s something about it that makes it clunky. Haven’t tried Cursor CLI yet though.
Why is Claude Code better than Cursor?
My company has a huge codebase, for me cursor would freeze up / not find relevant files. Claude code seems able to find the right files by itself.
I seem to always have better outcomes with Claude code.
Because iterating multiple sessions through multiple terminals is obviously more efficient and seamless than interacting thought a scuffed IDE side panel ui.
In my experience, it is much better at tool-calling, which is huge when we're talking about agentic coding. It also seems to do a better job of keeping things cleaning and not going off on tangents for anything that isn't accomplished in one shot.
I have had the exact opposite experience. Claude Code in any meaningful codebase for me gets stuck in loops of doing the wrong thing. Then when that doesn't work it deletes files and makes its own that don't have the problem it's encountering.
Cursor on the other hand, especially with GPT-5 today but typically with Sonnet 4.1, has been a workhorse at my company for months. I have never had Claude Code complete a meaningful ticket once. Even a small thing like fixing a small bug or updating the documentation on the site.
Would love any tips on how to make Claude Code not a complete waste of electricity.
Better prompts?
At this point, there are more AI coding agents announced every week than Javascript frameworks, but to be honest, I'm here for it.
Think how many JavaScript frameworks can be vibe coded now!
(This is an exaggeration:)
Sure, you can have your LLM code with any JavaScript framework you want, as long as you don't mind it randomly dropping React code and React-isms in the middle of your app.
It’s not a real JS framework without JSX support and Typescript types that generate page long errors.
Ironically, LLMs might make it very hard for new frameworks to gain popularity since they are trained on the popular ones.
Why would we create a framework to make coding easier when nobody writes code by hand any more?
Make one that's optimal for Ai somehow
Like convex.dev
The concept of JS framework which allows you to rapidly develop an app has the same underlying vibe as coding agent
I really like the IDE. It makes enough mistakes that I need to be constantly testing and catching little errors. I’ll interrupt the flow often when it’s going down a path I don’t want it to. When using Codex, for example, it’s doing too much in the background that is harder to correct afterwards. Am I doing this wrong?
Holy moly. I did not see that coming, but it makes sense. I’m enjoying the terminal-based coding agents way more than I ever would have expected. I can keep one spinning in the background while I do #dayjob, and as a bonus I feel like a haX0r.
2025 is the year of the terminal, apparently?
For my prototype purposes, it’s great, and Claude code the most fun I’ve had with tech in a jillion years.
With all the frontier labs competing in this space now, and them letting you use your consumer subscription through the CLI, I don’t understand how the Cursor products will survive. Why pay an extra $X/mo when I can get this functionality included in the $Y/mo I’m already paying OAI/Anthropic/GOOG?
I'm actually starting to think the opposite.
If Cursor can build the better UX for all the use-cases, mobile/desktop chatbot, assistant, in IDE coding agent, CLI coding agent, web-based container coding agent, etc.
In theory, they can spend all their resourcing on this, so you could assume they could have those be more polished.
If they win the market-share here, than the models are just commodity, Cursor lets you pick which ever is best at any given time.
In a sense, "users" are going to get locked in on the tooling. They learn the commands, configuration, and so on of Cursor, it's a higher cost for them to re-learn a different UX. Uninstalling and re-installing another app, plugin, etc. is annoying.
No, model providers are not going to let Cursor eat their pie. The biggest cost in AI is in developing LLM models and inference. Players incurring those costs will basically control this market.
I don't think we'll have more than 2 players. I think it's like AMD and Intel, the LLM is almost like providing hardware. The software that exposes the LLM capabilities to the user is the layer that will be able to differentiate.
The models are just going to be fighting performance/cost. And people will choose the best performance for their budget.
And that's ignoring how good local models are getting as well.
It's not that they'll have their launch eaten by Cursor, it's just that they can't be as focused on user experience when they're also laser focused on improving the models to stay competitive.
I think the complete opposite. I love the ux for claude code, but it would be better if it wasnt locked to a single vendor's model. It seems pretty clear to me that a vendor neutral product with a UX as good as Claude Code would be the clear winner.
I agree that cursor has to take an aggressive and differentiated approach to succeed, but they have the benefit of pushing each lab into a commodity.
I pay for Cursor and ChatGPT. I can imagine I’d pay for Gemini if I used an android. The chat bots (1) won’t keep the subscription competitive with APIs because the cost and usage models are different and (2) most chat bots today are more of a UX competition than model quality. And the only winners are ChatGPT and whatever integrated options the user has by default (Gemini, MSFT Copilot, etc).
Because you can always use the best model. Yesterday is was Claude Opus 4.1, today it's GPT-5. If you just were paying Anthropic you will be stuck with Claude.
Yeah but I still want a general purpose chatbot subscription also. So I’d have to buy Cursor + something else.
I guess Cursor makes sense for people who only use LLMs for coding.
I'm having trouble finding a use for this outside of virtualized unused environments. Why not instead give me a virtual machine that runs this in a confined storage space?
I would _never_ give an LLM access to any disk I own or control if it had anything more than read permissions
Why not? Have you ever actually used these things? The risk is incredibly low. I run claude code with zero permissions every day for hours. Never a problem.
I have (not an exhaustive list) SSH keys and sensitive repositories hanging out on my filesystem. I don't trust _myself_ with that, let alone an LLM, unless I'm running ollama or similar local nonsense with no net connectivity.
I'm a few degrees removed from an air gapped environment so obviously YMMV. Frankly I find the idea of an LLM writing files or being allowed to access databases or similar cases directly distasteful; I have to review the output anyway and I'll decide what goes to the relevant disk locations / gets run.
They don't have arbitrary access over your file system. They ask permission for doing most everything. Even reading files, they can't do that outside of the current working directory without permission.
Your obviously skilled, spending the money on a Claude only machine would pay for itself in less than three weeks. If I was your employer, it would be a no brainer.
Make me that offer :D
i'm betting on cursor being the long-term best toolset.
1. with tight integration between cli, background agent, ide, github apps (e.g. bugbot), cursor will accommodate the end-to-end developer experience.
2. as frontier models internalize task routing, there won't be much that feels special about claude code anymore.
3. we should always promote low switching costs between model providers (by supporting independent companies), keeping incentives toward improving the models not ui/data/network lock-in.
> we should always promote low switching costs between model providers (by supporting independent companies), keeping incentives toward improving the models not ui/data/network lock-in
You’re underestimating the dollars at play here. With cursor routing all your tokens, they will become a foundation model play sooner than you may think
You're allowing them to train on your code?
The code isn’t the valuable part. They know all the most common workflows and failure modes, allowing them to create better environments for training agentic models
i’d respectfully bet against this.
cursor and 3rd party tools will, unless they make their own superior foundation model, will always have to fight the higher marginal cost battle. This is particularly bad insofar that they offer fixed pricing subscriptions. That means they’re going to have to employ more context saving tricks which are at odds with better performance.
If the cost economics result in Cursor holding, say, 20% fewer tokens in context versus model-provider coding agents, they will necessarily get worse performance, all things equal.
Unless Cursor offers something dramatically different outside of the basic agentic coding stack it’s hard to see why the market will converge to cursor.
Happy to short that bet as I think agentic harnesses will be molded along the RL training of the actual model. Tony + the suit created together. Why Claude in Claude Code became existential for Cursor, why cursor moved quick to go agentic and build up with OpenAI in big header line way here.
Unless they pair up with OpenAI or Meta.
Fascinating to see how agents are redefining what IDEs are. This was not really the case in the chat AI era. But as autonomy increases, the traditional IDE UI becomes less important form of interaction. I think those CLI tools have pretty good chance to create a new dev tools ecosystem. Creating a full featured language plugin (let alone a full IDE) for VSCode or Intellij is not for a faint-hearted, and cross IDE portability is limited. CLI tools + MCP can be a lot simpler, more composable and more portable.
IDE UI should shift to focusing on catching agentic problems early and obviously, and providing drop dead simple rollback strategies, parallel survival-of-the-fittest solution generation, etc
That's funny. I was really hoping that Anthropic would make a "Claude GUI".
In one of their Claude Code talks they said it didn’t seem worth it, given their expectation that all IDEs will become obsolete by next year.
Xcode pretty much hung up their hat this year, and threw in with Claude.
If I'm not mistaken, it may be feasible to build one with the Claude Code sdk
Isn't that Claude Desktop?
I think CLI is a good idea for now. Next abstraction seems to be Github PRs where someone (likely me) files an issue/feature, then I click a button, and the agent fixes the issue/feature. Github has talked about something similar, but surely it were a pain to figure out if it was GA and I had access to it given so many different variations they have called gh copilot. (PS: it exists, but not as smooth as I described: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agent... )
What's the benefit of this compared to the IDE? To be more like Claude Code?
Flip your thinking around for a second and consider why an IDE is required for an agent that codes for you?
The IDE/editor is for me, the agent doesn't need it. That also means I am not forced to used whatever imperfect forked IDE the agent is implemented against.
> why an IDE is required for an agent that codes for you
Because the agents aren't yet good enough for a hands off experience. You have to continuously monitor what it does if you want a passable code base.
Sure, but monitoring, reviewing and steering does not really require modern IDEs in their current form. Also, I'm sure agents can benefit from parts of IDE functionality (navigation, static analysis, integration with build tools, codebase indexing, ...), but they sure don't need the UI. And without UI those parts can become simpler, more composable and more portable (being compatible with multiple agent tools). IMO another way to think about CLI agentic coding tools as of new form of IDEs.
I don't really need an IDE, but I do need a great code review interface.
I use lazygit for that. But any diff tool you like will work.
As someone who hasn’t used Claude Code yet, can’t you configure it somehow to use a different tool of your liking, or it has to be in the cli?
I end up using the VCS tooling (lazygit for me), but coding agents really need to be integrated with this review environment. We need an extra step where the agent will group its changes into logical units (database models in one commit, types in another, business logic in another, tests in another), rather than having to review per-file.
Programming has changed from writing code to reviewing/QAing and reprompting, but the tooling hasn't yet caught up with that workflow. We need Gerrit for coding agents, basically.
Many of these companies are realizing that mainline VSCode is a moat of sorts. I and many people I know won't use any of these that require forking VSCode.
With the benefit that you can also pull in people who don't like using VSCode such as people who use Jetbrains or terminal based code editors.
So you can use an IDE other than VS code.
I am so curious to know. Why is Cursor not just putting whatever this supposedly does better into... Cursor?
i dont think it actually does anything better than the chat window in the editor. its strictly worse tbh. it just lets you not be tied to a VSCode interface for editing.im sure Jetbrains diehards would very much appreciate this, but honestly i will find it hard to utilize given the fact Cursor's tab auto-complete is so amazing.
To compete with Claude code
They are competing with Claude Code already. The competition is not over who can built the nicest CLI.
You can spin up the Cursor CLI inside the terminal of your IDE of choice and not be tethered to Claude's models.
Is there a better agent than the anthropic one
Can you pick thinking models with this or is that implied?
GPT-5 seems a bit slow so far (in terms of deciding and awareness). I’ve gone from waiting for a compiler, to waiting for assets to build to now waiting for an agent to decide what to do - progress I guess :)
has to be, given the hype surrounding claude code, a few of them are using claude code just cause it's terminal based.
is there a way to get it to display more information? its stuck not doing anything and i cant tell if that's because it timed out or it is running a script or it is thinking or what is even happening. sometimes it just does things without even giving any feedback at all. i dont know what it is thinking or what it is trying to do and i cant really see the output of the terminal commands it is running. it just pauses every once in a while and asks to run a command.
is there a way to make it more verbose?
I noticed it was taking awhile on the first large-ish task I gave it. I'm assuming it was just a bit overloaded at the moment.
My first thought was, "meh, I already have Claude Code". But then I remembered my primary frustration with Claude Code. I need other LLMs to be able to validate Claude Code's assumptions and work. I need to do this in an automated way. Before Cursor CLI, I did not have a way to programmatically ask Cursor do this. It was very manual, very painful. But, now I can create a Claude Code agent that is a "cursor-specialist" that uses cursor cli to do all of that in an automated way.
Interesting, are you saying you would setup a Stop Hook in Claude Code that calls the Cursor CLI to have it validate and prompt Claude Code with further instructions?
Could anyone compare this with Claude Code and aider?
Claude Code but can use GPT-5 built in. Not a bad selling point
Claude Code can use GPT-5 via LiteLLM
https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/llm-gateway#l...
https://docs.litellm.ai/docs/tutorials/claude_responses_api
and access to Cursor's background agent on the web as well, like ChatGPT Codex. So to this point, I'm regret cancelling my Cursor subscription already
I wonder if this will support directly interfacing with OpenAI's APIs vs. going through Cursor's APIs (and billing).
I would highly doubt it. Even when you BYOK inside of Cursor they still say it's routed through their servers.
Hopefully this one is as good as Claude code. None of them that I've tried have come close yet.
Have you tried opencode?
Yeah, opencode and crush. I'm gonna give Claude code router a good try soon.
It seems they haven’t implemented MCP client features in Cursor CLI yet
Does it work with local LLMs like through Ollama or llama.cpp?
They realized that CLI is the much better interface for these kinds of tasks.
Is the pricing any good?
I’m mostly going to use this as a convenient way to run ffmpeg. Previously I’d need to open Cursor and ask for commands in the terminal there.
Pivot to CLI
There are certainly some lessons here that go beyond coding agents (when it comes to shipping products).
seems pretty basic. I don't see anything unique here. I am happy with my Gemini CLI.
So we’re all just waiting for AGENT.md to become the new README, huh? I’m ready when the agents are.
Claude Code finally has a serious competitor.
Not sure. So far Reddit seems largely negative on Cursor CLI + GPT-5
https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1mk8ks5/discussion_...
They are all using mid-tier gpt-5 variants (not the "-high" one that's hidden by default, not gpt-5-thinking) and don't realize it
Wouldn't be better to just use the Warp AI solution at this point?
Only if it would work. I think they miss a big opportunity here by (1) not caring about security at all, (2) trying to develop their own model and only make it available in the cloud.
What's the difference between Warp and just opening multiple tabs in my terminal?
They are all clones of gemini cli at this point?
Since Gemini CLI was released under the Apache license, a clone is easy to make.
Seriously Cursor. You can’t just write wrappers all your life. VSCode wrapper and now Gemini CLI wrapper. Can you make something from scratch for once? It’s as if they want an exit and they’re putting in minimum effort until that materializes.
When I saw this, the question which immediately came to mind was:
Then I saw the installation instructions, which are: And it made sense.Only those comfortable with installing software by downloading shell commands from an arbitrary remote web site and immediately executing them would use it.
So what then is the risk of running arbitrary file system modifications generated from a program installed via arbitrary shell commands? None more than what was accepted in order to install it.
Both are opaque, unreviewed, and susceptible to various well known attacks (such as a supply chain attack[0]).
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain_attack