Cursor
A proprietary VS Code fork built around an integrated AI agent ('Agent') and tab-completion model ('Tab') that turns the IDE into the surface for tool-using coding agents.
Description
Cursor is the IDE; Agent is the embedded coding agent inside it. Agent runs autonomously with no fixed tool-call limit, edits files, runs terminal commands, searches the codebase via a semantic index, calls MCP tools, and creates checkpoints before significant changes. The IDE provides inline diffs, chat, apply-edit, and autocomplete (Tab). The codebase is indexed locally into encrypted vector embeddings that are kept in sync, and the index can be shared across team members. Cursor advertises multi-mode interaction: Ask, Agent, and Auto modes.
Solution
Agent runs an unbounded tool-use loop inside the IDE. Each tool call (read, search semantic-index, edit-file, run-terminal, MCP) is reasoned about and executed; results are observed and fed back. Checkpoints are taken automatically before significant changes so users can roll back. The Tab model is a separate, much-tighter loop: predict-as-you-type completions independent of Agent. Agent asks for approval before MCP tools by default; users can enable auto-run.
Primary use cases
- IDE-embedded autonomous coding agent
- semantic-vector codebase search
- predictive autocomplete via Tab model
- MCP-tool integration with approval gating
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