Cursor IDE: A match made in heaven -until I run out of A.I. credits.

Ok, so here we are with my first bit of intel from the field, but it's a big piece of the puzzle. So, the site that you are checking out today was developed using an Integrated Development Environment or IDE, called Cursor, to help me develop most of what you see.

Though we have a minimal design aesthetic, there's a lot of bells and whistles that go on behind the scenes to make it all work. Now, I am no coder, but over time I have learned enough lingo and enough about what I want to build to know what to ask LLMs to make for me.

And if I don't know?

Well, then I have A.I. construct a prompt from my thoughts and then I clarify the details along the way until my idea is formed into deliberate, concise instructions I can pass along to my agents in Cursor.

My favorite things about Cursor:

1. MCP servers - Model Context Protocol or MCP is a way for A.I. models to carry out tasks on external tools. So, you can give it access to your front-end on Vercel and connect your GitHub repository and make live edits on your site when you commit to the main branch. Or connect to your Google Drive and create new folders or reorganize your files. This is a game changer because there are thousands of MCP servers out there already and the automations are really huge time savers.

2. Agent-Browser capabilities- In Cursor 2.0, they introduced the ability for the A.I. agents to use the browser to help you check for errors or select multiple divs (containers for grouping HTML elements) to reference in the chat. Or you can try to talk your way through it, which can be problematic if you don't know the proper names of things. The browser eliminates the middleman and reduces the hallucinations and saves tokens for better reasoning and higher performance.

3. Reasoning models- Cursor gives you plenty of choices when it comes to the model that you want to use for your specific needs. From high speed and low tokens to really smart and thorough. It supports LLMs like gpt-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and more.

Overall, Cursor is definitely high-end software. I would call it the triple-A title of IDEs. At the end of the day, it's just a tool, but it's a tool that lets me build things that I couldn't before. It makes me a faster and better developer and allows me to focus on the things that I'm good at, like thinking about the big picture and the vision of the site.

Wait, I almost missed my favorite feature about Cursor, which is probably the most used feature as well: Compos- Mode. In Compose, you can just type out a general request for a new feature or a fix and Cursor will go and find every file that needs to be updated and suggest the changes for you. This allows you to build out features incredibly fast. When combined with the reasoning of the newest models, it is very powerful.

Code = word zombies.

Cursor mows down lines of code, and it's only going to get better at doing it. As a vibe-coder, it is my IDE of choice because I can do the vibe coding, but actually connect it to my repository, tools, and services. We will see how far it will take me. I've used Figma, Make, Google A.I. Studio, and Co-Pilot, but none of them ever got me this far. Google just dropped Anti-Gravity, which I may give a shot, but right now, I just want to keep building with Cursor until I can roll out my first next key feature for this site.

If Cursor never changed over 10 years, and it was the only A.I. tool you used every day, then you will probably own 10 multi-million dollar projects. It may run you about $200-500/m depending on what you're doing, but let's do the math for an education, shall we?

$24,000 for four years. That's not a bad education. Especially, especially if you're building to be profitable. And there's so much opportunity out there to make that $24K back before you graduate. $500 a month is worth setting up a system that can receive money for you over time. And if you convert that into Bitcoin? Well, we'll get into that in the next bit.

But here's the thing: In reality, it's not going to stay the same for 10 years. A.I. will get better, smarter, and cheaper. Vibe coding is to coding, as Serato control records is to vinyl DJs. That last connection between seeing and reading the code to just tapping that sync button and letting the transition ride out is upon us. If you hop in now, you might still remember the old way, which will help you be the best translator for the new way to all the late comers who pick up the shovels after all the digging has been done.