The battle for the best AI coding tool intensifies every week, with each releasing a new update and feature to get ahead of the other. Now that GitHub Copilot is able to make Cursor cry by partnering with Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI to bring their AI models to its integrated development environment (IDE), Cursor has taken a step forward in the race.
Cursor has released Agents in its 0.43 update. With this, it can pick up context on its own, use the terminal, and complete tasks with full autonomy using only a single prompt.
The update also includes a sneak peek at the upcoming bug-finding feature, a cleaner Composer UI, a semantic search of context in chat, and several performance improvements. Currently, it only allows the use of Claude Sonnet. A user on X posted a video of Cursor Composer Agent reading project files.
Sneak peak of Cursor Composer Agent reading project files
pic.twitter.com/zY17komg2b
— echo.hive (@hive_echo) November 24, 2024
The Cursor Agent and the Composer are now part of a new tab on the platform which makes it easier for developers to interact with it quickly within the chat window. Instead of an overlay, one can toggle the Agent on or off anytime during the workflow, making the experience more intuitive.
This comes exactly a few days after Anysphere, the team behind Cursor, acquired AI coding assistant Supermaven for an undisclosed amount. Michael Truell, CEO of Cursor, said that Supermaven will enable the launch of a new version of the Tab AI model that would be faster and more contextually aware for long sequences of code. He added that this would become the core of a Cursor’s offerings.
Supermaven was established by Jacob Jackson, co-founder of AI-powered coding assistant Tabnine. Following Tabnine’s acquisition by the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA) in 2019, Jackson took on an internship at OpenAI, where he remained until 2022.
Jackson noted that as part of Cursor, the Supermaven team can collaboratively develop the editor’s user interface alongside the models. This is exactly what the new update of Cursor is shaping into.
For example, a video posted on the YouTube channel WorldofAI shows how, in order to create an application, an Agent was able to install packages automatically and also import multiple files necessary for the project while running all terminal commands directly in line.
The Composer allows developers to quickly render and visualise the built applications, similar to what Claude did with its Artifact feature. The semantic search feature, with its ability to recall contextual information consistently, works in a manner similar to the search feature in VS Code.
Surfing is All You Need
AI coding tools are in neck-to-neck competition. Cursor definitely seems to be on the move. Instead of engaging in a competition with established players like GitHub Copilot or Claude, or hundreds of YC-funded open-source AI code editors like Continue, Pearl, Void, Type, and Melty, Cursor seems to be competing with Codeium. Notably, Codeium recently released Windsurf, the first agentic IDE for coding.
Windsurf aims to collaborate with users like a Copilot and tackle complex tasks independently like an agent. Setting it up is easy. It pulls all plugins and settings from VS Code, just like Cursor currently does.
Windsurf’s standout features include contextual awareness to optimise suggestions, command execution for streamlined workflows, and Cascade, an innovation that lets developers resume tasks seamlessly. Since Windsurf is cheaper per token than Cursor, developers are increasingly flocking to it instead of Cursor.
This is exactly what Cursor has also released with its latest update. These AI coding tools now include multi-file editing, which is aimed at enhancing productivity and making complex coding tasks more manageable. Windsurf and Cursor Agent are redefining how developers interact with their tools.
Windsurf is touted to be a ‘Cursor killer’ by many. “The agent wrote all the code for me (scraper, converter, and web app). I mainly just guided it to get the functionality I wanted,” said Elvis S, co-founder of DAIR.AI.
Cursor is Still the Best
“The next phase of AI code generation will not only be defined by multi-model functionality but by multi-model choice,” said GitHub at the GitHub Universe conference, underscoring its commitment to open developer choice. However, this is not something that the Cursor team is unaware of as they have been offering all of the models for coding in their platform.
This new Agent update will be rolled out soon. Anysphere’s co-founders, the creators of Cursor, have claimed that GitHub Copilot is falling behind because Microsoft cannot innovate at the pace of a startup like Anysphere.
On the other hand, Aman Sanger, co-founder of Anysphere, earlier said, “I think that Cursor a year from now will need to make the Cursor of today look obsolete.” This indicates that the Cursor team is not sitting ducks. With a valuation of $2.5 billion, OpenAI-backed Cursor is already making $4 million a month in revenue. It is now part of the big boys.
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