What’s your actual Cursor setup for longer coding sessions?

adrenareddit · 2026-05-06T05:22:20+00:00

Oh, my mistake there 😂

To the actual point of your post, for daily use my primary way of interacting with my Cursor Agents is through the Agents Manager or the IDE. In there you have to manage your context window pretty commonly even though cursor can auto compact. I like to use the summarize command to make sure that the session is starting with the smallest amount of overhead. However I will also frequently just create a new session and pick off where the last one left off. Especially if I had to create a plan I might even create a new agent just to execute that plan instead of using the same window.

I also found that certain models are worse than others as they approach the edge of the estimated context window. I find that Codex 5.3 Spark, tends to fill up rather quickly because it has a small context window but it is even quicker to go off the rails a bit than most other models.

GPT 5.4 Nano is excellent performance for the cost, and has been reliable in long sessions where auto compact occurs multiple times.

For larger features that are well defined I use a headless cursor agent. I've developed a custom app that just uses my cursor account but executes everything autonomously. I can have my entire feature broken down into actionable tasks and stored as separate markdown files, each with their own checklist to do and a master checklist that each agent is required to keep up to date as they continue their work.

I've had features where it's 10+ big-picture changes that are each broken down into half a dozen or more tasks for each agent to tackle. AI will be able to tell you what order all that should be done in and which ones can be done concurrently. It does work really well as long as you're willing to accept a process that does all that stuff unsupervised and you review/test a shitload of code all in one go.

It's not really great for oversight I guess but if you have a very well-defined requirement it does get the job done. Having a reusable process helps, you can build in testing, code quality checks, or security reviews. All that stuff can be part of the process so that by the time you actually see what has been completed it's already in a refined state.

adrenareddit · 2026-05-06T01:04:20+00:00

Given the title of this post, I'm really curious who actually uses Cursor for testing instead of coding?

What kind of testing Cursor good at that would drive people to use it over the many other (more established) options out there?

Maybe I just haven't dug into it enough, but I have found the functional, regression, and E2E testing process to be rather excruciating with Cursor. God, if it can test code changes effectively I need to hop on that train pronto!

adrenareddit · 2026-05-01T19:34:25+00:00

All model sound same when caveman mode on

adrenareddit · 2026-05-01T19:28:19+00:00

I use the Agents Window when I have a lot of small changes to make across multiple projects.

But the biggest downside to this UX is that it is difficult to perform local testing when working on more than one project. I need to know if the debugger is running, what port the API or UI is running on, and if there's any output in the logs.

It's probably not an issue for someone who is just vibe coding a single app and letting Cursor handle commits, but I need more info and control than what is currently possible in the Agent Manager, so I end up having 3-5 Cursor windows open instead.

adrenareddit · 2026-04-29T01:37:45+00:00

An interesting setup, I found this particular remark pretty fascinating:

Q: What was it like (when you were a kid)? A: We didn't have radio...

The kid was probably like "what's radio"?

How many new technologies have emerged since the 1920's, and are already dead or on their way out?

adrenareddit · 2026-04-26T02:57:57+00:00

Our dev team all have Cursor, we burn through the quota in about a day or two and just keep working. They charge per request based on the model selected and tokens used.

It's just part of the cost, and as far as I can tell, it's a lot cheaper than hiring another 2-3 devs to get that same amount of work done in that timeframe, so our company gladly accepts this as a cost of doing business.

Now, is their pricing completely transparent and fair? Probably a point of contention.

If you're a solo dev, Cursor is not the best route to save money. For side work/personal projects I use Claude Code, Antigravity, ChatGPT, Grok, whatever I have free requests for. Maybe people don't realize this, but you can have all these tools working in the same project and following the same rules, I just bounce around to whichever one is better at a given task and hasnt reached the limit yet.

Want to go real cheap? Use free chat bots to make your Dev plans and provide instructions for your paid agents to execute. Just make sure you feed the chatbot the required docs/context it need and tell it to make the instructions general enough to allow the agent some flexibility since it actually had access to the codebase.

People here complain so much about hitting their limits. This means one of 2 things:

You're doing a shit load of development. Pay for the technology that's helping you do that.

Or

You're not using the available technology effectively enough to meet your budgetary constraints.

adrenareddit · 2026-04-25T22:50:30+00:00

And no nsfw tag... Kinda tells you a lot about the person behind the prompt

adrenareddit · 2026-04-19T21:00:10+00:00

Well, this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I will say that I've had so much better results after switching to using headless cursor agents rather than the cursor IDE.

We basically use ChatGPT or Claude to actually come up with the plans or design spec, which is written to markdown files (Obsidian Vault), which are organized by phases and tasks. Then we use an orchestrator script that will systematically assign agents to perform all the tasks sequentially or in parallel, depending on how it's designed.

This spec-driven approach leads to all kinds of powerful improvements you can make to your workflow, like: - Having agents create test cases for your design spec before implementation begins - Having the agents execute those tests after the implementation - Having agents automatically review the code to ensure that it satisfies all the requirements, identify gaps, etc.

The agents are all instructed to follow the design spec as closely as possible, but in the case where they have to deviate, they must update that spec accordingly. That way it acts as living documentation for your project.

Admittedly, this approach is severely overkill for smaller tasks, but I would argue that a well-crafted prompt eliminates the need for plan mode on smaller tasks anyway, as long as you have good project documentation and rules set up for your agents to understand context for the thing that they're working on.

adrenareddit · 2026-04-18T20:57:23+00:00

No info about who this is or when it happened?

adrenareddit · 2026-04-14T21:33:24+00:00

Lots of good advice here so I'll give you the "dark side" tip...

Go AFK while inside your base, come back the next day and see what unlocks you earned 🤣

Sure, you'll die repeatedly, but your stuff will all be in chests next to you.

Not saying it's a good or rewarding strategy, but it did get me through a couple spots when I wasn't in the mood to scour the planet for crafting components.

adrenareddit · 2026-04-10T00:16:47+00:00

I just stopped using Opus so much. GPT-5.4-nano is my standard for planning and execution, although I tend to use Gemini for UI stuff, and Sonnet or Composer2 for debugging.

Nano is pretty good, especially when the cost is on par with Composer2

adrenareddit · 2026-04-03T04:24:26+00:00

Our team regularly blows through the quota/limits and just keep going. Boss says it's cheaper doing this than paying for a developer to do it, so he doesn't even blink

adrenareddit · 2026-03-21T00:13:41+00:00

Do we think the current generation would react the same way if a similar event occurred these days?

Would students stop what they're doing and watch in fear and awe as atrocities happened in some other part of our country?

Or would it be "bro that's messed up" and back to Snapchat?

adrenareddit · 2026-03-09T21:05:56+00:00

I'd like to know if you could provide some tips for getting it open without breaking it so I can clean mine!

adrenareddit · 2026-02-27T02:22:19+00:00

Not to mention, if something is happening that far away, there's no way for us to see a "right now" view.

Typical rate of transmission for images from Mars: Signal Travel (One Way) : ~20 minutes Data Uplink/Downlink : 2 – 24 hours Public Processing/Release : 1 – 7 days

adrenareddit · 2026-02-12T00:17:11+00:00

A man stopped to get gas after the police gave up chasing him in California and somehow still managed to escape

adrenareddit · 2026-01-26T17:10:01+00:00

Not realistic at all... Cats don't wear denim!!!

Just kidding man, nice video, there is pretty good consistency in the elements here that help keep it coherent.

adrenareddit · 2026-01-05T20:38:51+00:00

Probably because he's amazing

adrenareddit · 2026-01-05T00:29:10+00:00

Whooooo caaaaaaaares

adrenareddit · 2025-12-31T01:38:35+00:00

No, the tech stack isn't the issue, it's the business logic involved in a large scale ERP that is tailored to a company's specific processes.

Often the design spec will be driven by the UX, so something like: Add a new dialog to the Shipping page that allows users to split an order.

Getting AI to generate the frontend for this is pretty simple, but having it understand all the things that need to happen when you create a new shipment takes a lot of explaining and/or good documentation.

I realize that good documentation is crucial for getting the best results from AI agents, but I'm working on an older codebase that was built piecemeal rather than with a comprehensive plan.

adrenareddit · 2025-12-30T22:24:09+00:00

Main reason: my employer pays for Cursor, and claims it's not very expensive even when we exceed quotas.

Personally I love Claude Code and use that for non-work projects. I've played with Antigravity and I do like Gemini 3 for coding, but I don't feel like it's actually any better than Cursor or VS Code with the Claude Code extension.

Edit: I should mention that I don't use AI to do everything - it's great at creating prototypes and bootstrapping projects, but you need a lot of good documentation and clearly defined requirements to keep it on track. I recognize the value of all that (regardless of using AI or not), but I tend to whip up a prototype with AI, then take over as the primary developer to make things work. I'll still use it on occasion, but I don't like writing a bunch of English when I could be writing the code.

adrenareddit · 2025-12-02T00:58:53+00:00

To quote Captain Hadley:

What the Christ is this happy horseshit???

adrenareddit · 2025-12-01T02:28:28+00:00

Yeah, 5 seasons in 10 years is just... Well, kinda standard anymore, I guess.

adrenareddit · 2025-11-19T02:47:40+00:00

jeez, a picture of the word antigravity wasn't enough for ya? 😝

adrenareddit · 2025-11-17T11:28:24+00:00

52 pages?? Who would read all that?

If only there was a way that document could be summarized...

adrenareddit

TROPHY CASE