Tips for Using the AI Coding Editor Cursor (Overview)

Martin Breuss

Tips for Using the AI Coding Editor Cursor Martin Breuss 03:59

Cursor is an AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) based on the Visual Studio Code codebase. It comes with a multi-agent interface and the Composer model for fast, agentic coding while keeping a familiar editor workflow with project-aware chat, code completion, and inline edits.

In this course, you will:

Understand why Cursor might work for you
Learn how to use different modes & models
See how to run multiple agents at a time
Resolve a tiny merge conflict
Run a project and fix a bug
Learn commands and practice with the terminal

00:00 Welcome to this code conversation on tips for using the AI coding editor Cursor. Now, if you’re wondering whether this course is for you, then I have a couple of questions for you.

00:10 Maybe you’re curious about AI coding tools, but you’re unsure where you should start, or maybe you’re overwhelmed by the frequency or amount of coding tasks that you have to tackle, or you’re just looking for ways to streamline your workflows.

00:23 If any of these applies to you, then you’re in the right course. Let me give you a quick preview of the things that you’ll see in this course.

00:31 First of all, I always like to show things practically. So you will be exploring the AI coding editor Cursor while you’re also building a Python FastAPI app.

00:42 That’ll give me a bunch of opportunities to show you different features of Cursor and also just focus on the ones that are relevant for developing a practical project.

00:53 For example, you’ll see some of the different interaction modes that exist within Cursor. You’ll get to know Plan mode that can help you to organize and streamline the strategy before actually starting to code.

01:04 And then also Agent mode, which is the mode where the model then goes ahead and performs tasks for you, such as creating files, writing code, and also, for example, testing implementations.

01:16 You’ll get to see one of the strengths of Cursor, which is that you can select different models, which is not limited to one provider, but through Cursor you can access models from OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic or others and just switch between them for different tasks.

01:33 You can also use multiple models simultaneously to tackle just a single task and then decide which of the solutions better match what you were trying to do.

01:43 I’ll also show you how you can try to step away from your keyboard and interact with the models using just your voice.

01:52 You’ll see how Cursor has a built-in browser that is very convenient for testing and debugging web applications. I’ll show you how you can debug errors that you may run into by just adding error messages to the chat and leveraging that the model has the context of your project available.

02:11 And I’ll also show you that you don’t have to let the model do everything. You can also switch to manual coding or executing commands by yourself, and I’ll talk a little bit about when may be a good time to switch between different modes, between handing off control and taking control back.

02:31 In this course, I’m working with a paid subscription of Cursor, that’s the lowest-tier paid subscription, but there is also a free version, and you should be able to work through the free version as well, although you will run into usage limits more quickly, and there’s a limited model selection.

02:49 Now, if this sounds interesting to you, I’m going to show you how to install and set up Cursor, then walk you through the Cursor interface, tackling both the Agents view and the Editor view.

03:00 I’m going to show you how to use Plan mode and Agent mode, how you can select different models, and also select multiple models for a workflow, how you can create prompts using your voice, and then even submit them using your voice.

03:14 You’ll get to see some version control in action, and we’ll together resolve a merge conflict, and then do some testing on the FastAPI app, fix a bug with AI support and the likes.

03:26 I’ll also, throughout the course, give and take control between myself as the driver and then also the AI model as the executor of some of the tasks. And finally, there will be some learning opportunities, because there’s always a chance to learn something new.

03:41 And I want to also tackle how you might encounter that in an AI-assisted coding environment and how you can use it and leverage it to learn new things.

03:50 So I hope you’ll stick around, and in the next lesson I’ll show you how to get and install Cursor and set it up.

Become a Member to join the conversation.