Cursor 3 • Hacker News Board

Re: Cursor 3

#61

Post by lukebechtel » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #22

davidgomes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Cursor is multi-model, meaning you can use at least a dozen different models. 2. Cursor's UI allows you to edit files, and even have the good old auto-complete when editing code. 3. Cursor's VSCode-based IDE is still around! I still love using it daily. 4. Cursor also has a CLI. 5. Perhaps more importantly, Cursor has a Cloud platform product with automations, extremely long-lived agents and lots of other features…

I hope this comes off as constructive criticism, but I'm confused about what cursor is now. Cursor is an IDE and an agentic interface and a cli tool and a platform that all work locally and and in the cloud and in the browser and supports dozens of different models. I don't know how to use the thing anymore, or what the thing actually is.

it sounds like you described it pretty well!

Re: Cursor 3

#62

Post by lubujackson » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #2

So it has converged to the same UI/UX as the Claude/Codex desktop apps. If that's the case, why use Cursor over those more canonical apps?

For $20 a month, I can plan and implements a couple features in 4 hours with Claude. Then I have to wait.

For $20 a month, I can plan and implement thousands of features using Composer 2 or Auto with Cursor. The usage limits are insanely higher. Yes, the depth of understanding is not Opus 4.6, but most work doesn't need that. And the work that does need it I pass to Claude.

I can code 8 hours a day using LLMs as my primary driver spending just $40 a month.

Re: Cursor 3

#63

Post by bensyverson » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #22

davidgomes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Cursor is multi-model, meaning you can use at least a dozen different models. 2. Cursor's UI allows you to edit files, and even have the good old auto-complete when editing code. 3. Cursor's VSCode-based IDE is still around! I still love using it daily. 4. Cursor also has a CLI. 5. Perhaps more importantly, Cursor has a Cloud platform product with automations, extremely long-lived agents and lots of other features…

I hope this comes off as constructive criticism, but I'm confused about what cursor is now. Cursor is an IDE and an agentic interface and a cli tool and a platform that all work locally and and in the cloud and in the browser and supports dozens of different models. I don't know how to use the thing anymore, or what the thing actually is.

I'm having the same issue, as a former Cursor user and current Claude Code addict. CC is a very clear mental model. So is "agent in your IDE," like Cursor used to be and Xcode is now. The advantage of my current setup is that it's the terminal and Xcode, just as it has been for over 20 years.

I applaud Cursor for experimenting with design, and seeing if there are better ways of collaborating with agents using a different type of workspace. But at the moment, it's hard to even justify the time spent kicking the tires on something new, closed source and paid.

Re: Cursor 3

#64

Post by bb1298 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

Archonical wrote: post #54

adityamwagh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they make money from the tokens then haha? The main revenue driver of these companies is to get people to use more tokens. That’s what they will optimise for. Getting the developers out of the way is the way to do it.

Isn’t Cursor’s business model mostly subscriptions? They’re the ones paying for inference, not the user directly, right? So wouldn’t they be incentivized to minimize token usage per unit of user value, not maximize raw tokens?

Nope. Enterprise you pay for seat to access all of the enterprise features and then you just pay for tokens as you go. Vast majority of their actual revenue comes from enterprise and their revenue is just api pass through to the model providers.

Re: Cursor 3

#65

Post by laanako08 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

seamossfet wrote: post #11

Man, I wish they'd keep the old philosophy of letting the developer drive and the agent assist. I feel like this design direction is leaning more towards a chat interface as a first class citizen and the code itself as a secondary concern. I really don't like that. Even when I'm using AI agents to write code, I still find myself spending most of my time reading and reasoning about code. Showing me little snippets of…

[dead]

Re: Cursor 3

#66

Post by dominotw » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

simlevesque wrote: post #19

davidgomes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Cursor is multi-model, meaning you can use at least a dozen different models. 2. Cursor's UI allows you to edit files, and even have the good old auto-complete when editing code. 3. Cursor's VSCode-based IDE is still around! I still love using it daily. 4. Cursor also has a CLI. 5. Perhaps more importantly, Cursor has a Cloud platform product with automations, extremely long-lived agents and lots of other features…

You can use almost any model with Claude Code.

that doesnt make sense. how?

Re: Cursor 3

#67

Post by davnicwil » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

seamossfet wrote: post #11

Man, I wish they'd keep the old philosophy of letting the developer drive and the agent assist. I feel like this design direction is leaning more towards a chat interface as a first class citizen and the code itself as a secondary concern. I really don't like that. Even when I'm using AI agents to write code, I still find myself spending most of my time reading and reasoning about code. Showing me little snippets of…

My guess would be this is less driven by product philosophy, more driven by trying to maximise chances of a return on a very large amount of funding in an incredibly tough market up against formidable, absurdly well-funded competitors.

It's a very tough spot they're in. They have a great product in the code-first philosophy, but it may turn out it's too small a market where the margins will just be competed away to zero by open source, leaving only opportunity for the first-party model companies essentially.

They've obviously had a go at being a first-party model company to address this, but that didn't work.

I think the next best chance they see is going in the vibe-first direction and trying to claim a segment of that market, which they're obviously betting could be significantly bigger. It's faster changing and (a bit) newer and so the scope of opportunity is more unknown. There's maybe more chances to carve out success there, though honestly I think the likeliest outcome is it just ends up the same way.

Since the beginning people have been saying that Cursor only had a certain window of time to capitalise on. While everyone was scrambling to figure out how to build tools to take advantage of AI in coding, they were one of the fastest and best and made a superb product that has been hugely influential. But this might be what it looks like to see that window starting to close for them.

Re: Cursor 3

#68

Post by fweimer » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

Archonical wrote: post #54

adityamwagh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they make money from the tokens then haha? The main revenue driver of these companies is to get people to use more tokens. That’s what they will optimise for. Getting the developers out of the way is the way to do it.

Isn’t Cursor’s business model mostly subscriptions? They’re the ones paying for inference, not the user directly, right? So wouldn’t they be incentivized to minimize token usage per unit of user value, not maximize raw tokens?

It's pay-as-you-go after a certain number of included requests/tokens: https://cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing

Re: Cursor 3

#69

Post by rvshchwl » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:12 PM UTC

I love Cursor. As a Product Manager who's not really had coding experience, it's been very useful. I'm able to have a browser on the side and make changes easily, and click through exactly what I want to change rather than having the LLM guess which component I'm talking about. Having multiple models has also been great, as well as the MCP integration. Most times I don't need all the MCPs, but I like being able to turn them on or off based on what I'm doing, like JIRA or Grafana.

One of my favorite startups and I genuinely like to keep subscribing to them.

Re: Cursor 3

#70

Post by simplyluke » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

Daily cursor user who's been previewing this a bit while it was in alpha.

I think it's a really solid release, and while cursor seems to have fallen out of the "cool kids club" in the past three months it remains the most practical tool for me doing AI-first work in a large production code base. The new UI works better in a world where agents are doing most of the work and I can hop back into the IDE interface to make changes.

We've set up a linear integration where I can delegate simpler tasks to cloud agents, and the ability to pick that work up in cursor if I need to go back in forth is a real productivity boost. The tighter integration with cloud agents is something I've been hoping for recently.

I appreciate not being tied at the hip to one model provider, and have never loved doing most of my work from the command line. I was on vs code + meta's internal fork of it for years prior to the current AI wave, so that was a pretty natural transition. I'm pretty optimistic on cursor's ability to win in the enterprise space, and think we're going to see open source models + dev tools win with indie devs over things like claude code as costs start getting passed down more and the gap between frontier models and open source gets tighter.