I Used Cursor AI for 3 Months: An Honest Review (Goodbye VS Code?)

Hey everyone! If you’re a developer today, you’ve probably seen the hype around Cursor AI. It seems like every other post on X (formerly Twitter) or Dev.to is someone claiming they uninstalled VS Code and will never look back.

But as working developers, we know that switching our main IDE is a massive commitment. Is it actually worth learning a new tool, or is it just the latest shiny AI toy?

To find out, I decided to go all-in. I uninstalled VS Code (okay, I just hid the icon, I was too scared to uninstall it) and used Cursor AI as my daily driver for the last three months. I used it for everything: building a React frontend, tinkering with some Python automation scripts, and even writing some of the markdown for this blog.

Here is my honest, unfiltered review of what it’s actually like to use Cursor AI full-time.

What is Cursor AI?

Before we dive in, let's clarify what this tool actually is.

Cursor is a code editor built specifically around AI. It is a fork of VS Code, which means it looks, feels, and acts exactly like VS Code. Your themes work, your extensions work, and your keybindings work.

But instead of just adding a chatbot window to the side (like GitHub Copilot Chat), the AI is baked into the very core of the editor. It uses models like GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet to understand your entire codebase.

The Best Feature: Codebase-Aware Chat (Cmd/Ctrl + L)

The standout feature that immediately blew me away is the chat interface. You can press Cmd + L (or Ctrl + L) to open the chat. But here’s the kicker: it knows about all your files.

Instead of copying and pasting code from three different files into ChatGPT and explaining how they connect, I can just type: "How does the authentication flow work in this project? Refer to auth.ts and login.tsx."

Cursor reads the files, understands the context, and gives me a direct answer. It can even suggest code changes that span across multiple files. This single feature has saved me countless hours of context-switching.

My 3 Favorite Things About Cursor

After three months of daily use, a few things really stood out to me as game-changers.

1. Command-K (The Magic Wand)

Pressing Cmd + K opens a small prompt box right in your editor. You can highlight a block of code, press Cmd + K, and type something like: "Refactor this to use React hooks instead of a class component" or "Make this function more memory efficient."

It generates a diff right in line. You can review the red (deletions) and green (additions), and just hit Enter to accept. It feels incredibly natural. I find myself writing a comment explaining what I want a function to do, hitting Cmd + K, and letting it write the boilerplate.

2. Painless Bug Fixing

We’ve all been there: you get a massive, cryptic red error in your terminal. In VS Code, you copy the error, paste it into Google, and start clicking StackOverflow links.

In Cursor, there is literally a button next to terminal errors that says "Debug with AI". Click it, and Cursor analyzes the error, looks at the relevant files, and tells you exactly what went wrong and how to fix it. It is frighteningly accurate about 80% of the time.

3. Claude 3.5 Sonnet Integration

You can choose which AI model Cursor uses under the hood. While GPT-4o is great, selecting Claude 3.5 Sonnet turned Cursor into an absolute beast. Claude seems to be much better at understanding large, complex coding structures without forgetting context. If you use Cursor, switch to Claude for your primary coding tasks!

The Drawbacks: It's Not Perfect

It wouldn't be a fair review if I didn't mention the pain points.

• The Pricing: Cursor isn't entirely free. There's a free tier, but you blow through the fast AI requests very quickly if you code every day. The Pro tier is $20/month. While I think it pays for itself in time saved, it is an extra subscription you have to manage.
• Sometimes it hallucinates confidently: Just like any LLM, it will occasionally make up a function that doesn't exist in a library. Because it writes the code so confidently and formats it beautifully, you might trust it blindly and then spend 20 minutes figuring out why library.doMagicFunction() is throwing an undefined error.
• Privacy Concerns: You are sending your codebase context to an AI server. Cursor has an "enterprise" privacy mode, but if you are working on highly sensitive or proprietary code for a strict employer, you might not be allowed to use it.

The Verdict: Will I Go Back to VS Code?

No. I'm sticking with Cursor.

The truth is, because Cursor is VS Code under the hood, I don't feel like I gave anything up. I kept all my favorite extensions and themes. I only gained superhuman AI abilities.

If you are a developer, I highly recommend downloading it and trying it for a weekend project. You don't have to change your workflow immediately, but once you get used to Cmd + K and codebase-aware chat, writing code the old way feels like coding with one hand tied behind your back.

Have you tried Cursor yet? Let me know what you think!