Cursor CLI

Yeah I suspect some of these providers will become Microsoft in the '90s type bully holdouts on implementing the emerging conventions. But ultimately with CLI interface you have workarounds to all the major providers read in your system guidelines. But in an IDE - e.g. like MS had with VisualStudio - you more lock-in potential for your config files.

Yesterday, I was writing about a way I found to pass the same guideline documents into Claude, Gemini, and Aider CLI-coders: https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/case-studies/a...

I really like the idea of standardizing on AGENT.md, although it's too bad it doesn't really work with the .cursor/rules/ approach of having several rules files that get included based on matching the descriptions or file globs in frontmatter. Then again, I'm not sure if any other agents support an approach like that, and in my experience Cursor isn't entirely predictable about which rules files it ends up including in the context.

I guess having links to supplementary rules files is an option, but I'm not sure which agents (if any) would work well with that.

Yep, that's a peeve of mine. I've resorted to using AGENT.md, and aliasing Claude, Gemini, etc to a command that calls them with an initial instruction to read that file. But of course they will forget after some time.

The whole agentic coding via CLI experience could be much improved by:

- Making it easy to see what command I last issued, without having to scroll up through reams of output hunting for context - Making it easy to spin up a proper sandbox to run sessions unattended - Etc.

Maybe for code generation, what we actually need is a code generator that is itself deterministic but uses AI, instead of AI that does code generation.

That's a more obvious (but less fun) name than what I've been using: ROBOTS.md with symlinks.

Thank you so much for this!

Agree. It's all English. That's the whole point of these tools.

Why are we purposely creating CLI dialects?

When they stop getting desperate for differentiation by spamming their brand advertising in your repo against your will.

Claude Code likes to add "attribution" in commit messages, which is just pure spam.

Think how many JavaScript frameworks can be vibe coded now!

In one of their Claude Code talks they said it didn’t seem worth it, given their expectation that all IDEs will become obsolete by next year.

Isn't that Claude Desktop?

I'm actually starting to think the opposite.

If Cursor can build the better UX for all the use-cases, mobile/desktop chatbot, assistant, in IDE coding agent, CLI coding agent, web-based container coding agent, etc.

In theory, they can spend all their resourcing on this, so you could assume they could have those be more polished.

If they win the market-share here, than the models are just commodity, Cursor lets you pick which ever is best at any given time.

In a sense, "users" are going to get locked in on the tooling. They learn the commands, configuration, and so on of Cursor, it's a higher cost for them to re-learn a different UX. Uninstalling and re-installing another app, plugin, etc. is annoying.

I agree that cursor has to take an aggressive and differentiated approach to succeed, but they have the benefit of pushing each lab into a commodity.

I pay for Cursor and ChatGPT. I can imagine I’d pay for Gemini if I used an android. The chat bots (1) won’t keep the subscription competitive with APIs because the cost and usage models are different and (2) most chat bots today are more of a UX competition than model quality. And the only winners are ChatGPT and whatever integrated options the user has by default (Gemini, MSFT Copilot, etc).

Because you can always use the best model. Yesterday is was Claude Opus 4.1, today it's GPT-5. If you just were paying Anthropic you will be stuck with Claude.

Flip your thinking around for a second and consider why an IDE is required for an agent that codes for you?

The IDE/editor is for me, the agent doesn't need it. That also means I am not forced to used whatever imperfect forked IDE the agent is implemented against.

Many of these companies are realizing that mainline VSCode is a moat of sorts. I and many people I know won't use any of these that require forking VSCode.

With the benefit that you can also pull in people who don't like using VSCode such as people who use Jetbrains or terminal based code editors.

So you can use an IDE other than VS code.

You can spin up the Cursor CLI inside the terminal of your IDE of choice and not be tethered to Claude's models.

I am so curious to know. Why is Cursor not just putting whatever this supposedly does better into... Cursor?

I noticed it was taking awhile on the first large-ish task I gave it. I'm assuming it was just a bit overloaded at the moment.

Claude Code can use GPT-5 via LiteLLM

https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/llm-gateway#l...

https://docs.litellm.ai/docs/tutorials/claude_responses_api

and access to Cursor's background agent on the web as well, like ChatGPT Codex. So to this point, I'm regret cancelling my Cursor subscription already