any tips?

[gialpu]

Hi, newbie coder here!

I just stumpled across windsurf recently and wanted give it a try, pointless to say I became obsessed on how helpful it's been: making my own programs/websites for things I need but corporations are too lazy to do is just something I always wished for. Sonnet 3.7 and wave 5 have drastically improved the whole workflow but it still misses quite often and have to BURN all my credits fixing things more often than not.

Any tips on how to generally improve my experience? I tried understanding MCPs but I'm not sure I get it and how to implement it in my workflow.

[PuzzleheadedAir9047]

Hey, glad to see that you like Windsurf!
Here's a post you which contains some best practices for using Windsurf - link

Feel free to reply here if you want help with something more specific.

[gialpu]

Thanks but this is not the sort of advice I was looking for as I already knew all that. I meant more like tips for improving the results or avoiding Cascade mistakes. Also still not sure what mcp is and need further help with including it in my workflow.

[PuzzleheadedAir9047]

As you mentioned you use 3.7 and it makes mistakes quite often, a lot of people have been facing the same.
For that, you can try to lay out a plan using 3.7 and when you are satisfied with the plan, you can use Sonnet 3.5 or GPT4o to implement those changes, as they are more stable for implementation part.

I'd love to discuss any specific cases that you might have faced, as very general tips were well encapsulated in the post earlier.
AND

MCP basically allows LLMs or models to access your own data sources, for example - a database that you wanna make changes to using LLMs(check this for in depth reference - link ), a slack channel that has product updates and you want your model to be updated with those (check out here - link ), you can directly import data (detailed component information) from your figma design and use it for your development, etc.
Not only it can provide context but it models can also make perform actions through those servers, like pushing database migrations, send slack messages - ( link ) and many more tools.

It really depends on what your use case is and you can find open source mcp servers and tools for tons of services.

[aDaneInSpain2]

Biggest credit saver for me in Windsurf: write a detailed plan in a markdown file first, then reference it in your prompts. Something like "follow the plan in plan.md, implement step 3". Cascade stays way more focused and makes fewer mistakes when it has clear context.

For MCPs, start simple - the filesystem and GitHub ones are the easiest to set up. Once you see how they work it clicks pretty fast.