Should I Switch from VS Code to Cursor — and How Do I Set It Up?

I'd been on VS Code for years. When Cursor kept showing up in my feed, I assumed it was Copilot in a trench coat. I only installed it because I was stuck on a refactor I didn't want to touch — a pile of similar components and no energy to copy-paste my way through it.

First week: mixed. Second week: I stopped opening VS Code for side projects. Not because Cursor is magic — because three specific features matched how I already work, just faster.

This is the setup and workflow I settled on. Not every feature. Not "10x developer" talk.

What's actually different (in plain terms)

Cursor is a VS Code fork with AI wired in deeper than a plugin bolt-on:

Tab completion — predicts the next chunk of code, not just the next word
Inline edit (Cmd+K) — select code, tell it what to change, diff in place
Composer — bigger tasks across multiple files, you approve each edit
Codebase chat — asks questions against your repo, not generic Stack Overflow answers

If you live in VS Code already, migration is boring in a good way. Extensions and keybindings mostly come along.

Installation (took me about two minutes)

Download from cursor.com. Open your project folder the same way you would in VS Code.

I imported my VS Code settings on first launch and kept my theme. Felt like home with a chat panel.

The three features I use daily

1. Tab completion

Grey suggestion appears as you type. Tab to accept.

Works best when you leave a hint:

// fetch paginated posts, handle loading + error states

Then Tab. Sometimes it nails the whole function. Sometimes you accept three lines and fix the rest. Still faster than typing boilerplate from scratch.

Personal detail: I wrote a docstring first on a utility function — Cursor filled the implementation before I got to the opening brace. Small win, but that's when I stopped treating it as a toy.

2. Inline edit — Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows)

Select code. Cmd+K. Type what you want:

Make this async
Add error handling for network failures
Rename to match our existing ApiClient pattern

It patches in place. You accept or undo. I use this more than full regeneration — less churn, fewer surprise rewrites.

I once asked it to "add error handling" on a fetch wrapper and it caught a case I'd been procrastinating on. I still read the diff. Always read the diff.

3. Composer — Cmd+Shift+I

For "create this hook / component / route" jobs that span files.

Example prompt I used on a Next.js project:

Create a React hook that fetches paginated data from our API.
Handle loading, errors, and refetch. Use our existing ApiClient in lib/.
Match patterns from other hooks in the project.

It proposes file changes. You approve line by line. Good for scaffolding. Bad if you accept everything without reading — I've learned that the hard way once, with an extra dependency I didn't want.

`.cursorrules` — worth five minutes

I added a .cursorrules file at the project root so suggestions stop fighting our stack:

You are working on a Next.js app using TypeScript and Tailwind CSS.

Rules:
- Use the App Router, not Pages Router
- Server components by default; "use client" only when needed
- PascalCase components, camelCase functions
- Shared logic lives in /lib, not inside page files
- Prefer simple error handling — no over-engineered wrappers

Vague rules get vague code. Specific rules get fewer arguments with the model.

Second personal detail: before rules, Cursor kept suggesting Pages Router patterns in an App Router repo. Three lines in .cursorrules mostly fixed that. Not perfectly — but enough that I stopped rage-undoing.

The workflow that stuck

What I actually do, most days:

Comment what I want, then Tab for a first pass
Composer for new files — hooks, components, test scaffolds
Cmd+K to refine — don't regenerate the whole file for one fix
Chat (Cmd+L) for "where is X?" — "where do we call the API for auth?" beats grep when I'm new to a codebase

What I skip: asking it to architect entire features in one shot and shipping blind. That's how you get clever code you don't understand.

Pricing (as of when I wrote this)

Free — limited completions and slow premium requests
Pro (~$20/month) — unlimited tab completion, more fast requests
Business — teams and admin stuff

I pay for Pro. Rough math: if it saves me one hour a month, it pays for itself. It saves more than that on boilerplate weeks. On debugging weeks, less — AI doesn't replace thinking through a weird bug.

Where I land on Cursor

It's not a replacement for knowing your codebase. It's a faster typing and scaffolding layer when you already know what you want — or you're exploring something small enough to review in a diff.

I still use git, still run tests, still reject bad suggestions. Cursor wins on the boring middle of coding: CRUD hooks, repetitive components, "make this match the pattern over there."

If you're on VS Code and curious: install it on a side project for a week. Keep your old editor open if that makes you feel safer. You don't owe it a full switch on day one.

If you're learning AI like I am — this is one of the tools where daily use actually teaches you something: how to describe code clearly, how to review generated diffs, when not to ask the model.

That's the skill that outlasts whichever editor is trending next month.