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As a Cursor user who hasn't tried Claude Code yet, am I missing anything? I seem (sometimes) exceptionally productive in it and it's working for me. To my under

As a Cursor user who hasn't tried Claude Code yet, am I missing anything? I seem (sometimes) exceptionally productive in it and it's working for me. To my understanding, Claude Code is all terminal, but something like an IDE seems like the better interface to me: I want to see the file system, etc. It seems Cursor doesn't have the mindshare relative to Claude in public discussion spaces.

nu11ptr 6mo ago
Claude Code isn't really "all terminal" if you embed that terminal in your IDE. I still use Cursor (for now), but I embed a CC panel via extension. With this launch of Cursor 3, I'll probably get off Cursor for good. I have zero interest in this.
- vira28 6mo ago
  Curious, why cursor for this? VSCode or pretty much pure open source IDE's have CC integration. Or am i missing something?
  - slashdave 6mo ago
    Probably momentum. It takes some effort to change tooling. This is why Cursor worked so well in the beginning. It just took over from VSCode seamlessly.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
ohmahjong 6mo ago
As someone whose work enforced a switch from Cursor to Claude Code, I do keep on top of the code by pairing it with an IDE, tracking/viewing changes etc. There's no real obstacle to using an IDE as you normally would, with Claude Code as a sidecar.
zwaps 6mo ago
Claude Code is where you move up one abstraction layer. Almost everyone using it productively has spend a lot of time working on their harness, ensuring that everything is planned out and structured such that all that is left is really type in the code. This typically works without error. Before that, you interact a lot via Claude Code in whatever abstraction you feel is right. That's basically it. You can review changes afterwards, but that's not the main point of Claude Code. It's a different workflow. It's built on the premise: given a tight and verifiable plan, AI will execute the actual coding correctly. This will work, mostly, if you use the very best models with a very good and very specific harness. Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down. I have no idea what is better, or faster. I suspect it depends at least on the problem, the AI, and the person.
- ninininino 6mo ago
  > Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down. This is not really true anymore. Cursor has better cloud agents than Claude. The multi-agent experience is better, the worktree management is better. Tagging specific code or files in chat is better. It's hard for me to express the level of pain and frustration I feel going from Cursor to Claude / Conductor+Claude / Claude Extension for VS Code, Claude in Zed, etc. Really hoping Claude puts more energy into Cowork as a competitor for Cursor and Codex.
  - dugidugout 6mo ago
    I think you are still speaking in the lower abstraction in terms of zwaps' provided understanding. "Tagging specific code" or "files" is likely the type of interfacing most Claude Code users are _not_ doing. Instead they are defining architecture through specs and verification-loops and attempting to one-shot solutions fitting clear tests. On reflection, I personally don't have many prompts with CC referencing files or code directly, rather I speak in specifications I can then track to a given instance of work in review. This isn't to suggest you can't work at this abstraction in cursor or w/e interface, but the features you suggest are hardly relevant to the divide zwaps is identifying.
visarga 6mo ago
I run Claude Code from Zed. Very nice experience.
- dmix 6mo ago
  I tried that for a couple weeks and it's no where near as well integrated as Cursor. I hope they get there though because I like Zed. Zed plus Claude feels more like using isolated browser extensions instead of something part of the browser (unless you pay for Zeds AI thing then the integration is marginally better).
dmix 6mo ago
It's good to try Claude Code just so you focus on skills, agents, and CLAUDE.md Then when you go back to Cursor it will still support all of those things in the settings. Using Cursor you tend to not think about those as much since Cursor does a lot of it for you as part of the IDE integration. But it's good to refine it your own way. But for the most part there isn't much difference.
omcnoe 6mo ago
You don't have to stop using the IDE just because you are using Claude Code. Using both at the same time is best of both worlds in my experience.

nu11ptr 6mo ago

Claude Code isn't really "all terminal" if you embed that terminal in your IDE. I still use Cursor (for now), but I embed a CC panel via extension. With this launch of Cursor 3, I'll probably get off Cursor for good. I have zero interest in this.

vira28 6mo ago
Curious, why cursor for this? VSCode or pretty much pure open source IDE's have CC integration. Or am i missing something?
- slashdave 6mo ago
  Probably momentum. It takes some effort to change tooling. This is why Cursor worked so well in the beginning. It just took over from VSCode seamlessly.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

ohmahjong 6mo ago

As someone whose work enforced a switch from Cursor to Claude Code, I do keep on top of the code by pairing it with an IDE, tracking/viewing changes etc. There's no real obstacle to using an IDE as you normally would, with Claude Code as a sidecar.

zwaps 6mo ago

Claude Code is where you move up one abstraction layer. Almost everyone using it productively has spend a lot of time working on their harness, ensuring that everything is planned out and structured such that all that is left is really type in the code. This typically works without error. Before that, you interact a lot via Claude Code in whatever abstraction you feel is right. That's basically it. You can review changes afterwards, but that's not the main point of Claude Code. It's a different workflow. It's built on the premise: given a tight and verifiable plan, AI will execute the actual coding correctly. This will work, mostly, if you use the very best models with a very good and very specific harness. Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down. I have no idea what is better, or faster. I suspect it depends at least on the problem, the AI, and the person.

ninininino 6mo ago
> Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down. This is not really true anymore. Cursor has better cloud agents than Claude. The multi-agent experience is better, the worktree management is better. Tagging specific code or files in chat is better. It's hard for me to express the level of pain and frustration I feel going from Cursor to Claude / Conductor+Claude / Claude Extension for VS Code, Claude in Zed, etc. Really hoping Claude puts more energy into Cowork as a competitor for Cursor and Codex.
- dugidugout 6mo ago
  I think you are still speaking in the lower abstraction in terms of zwaps' provided understanding. "Tagging specific code" or "files" is likely the type of interfacing most Claude Code users are _not_ doing. Instead they are defining architecture through specs and verification-loops and attempting to one-shot solutions fitting clear tests. On reflection, I personally don't have many prompts with CC referencing files or code directly, rather I speak in specifications I can then track to a given instance of work in review. This isn't to suggest you can't work at this abstraction in cursor or w/e interface, but the features you suggest are hardly relevant to the divide zwaps is identifying.

visarga 6mo ago

I run Claude Code from Zed. Very nice experience.

dmix 6mo ago
I tried that for a couple weeks and it's no where near as well integrated as Cursor. I hope they get there though because I like Zed. Zed plus Claude feels more like using isolated browser extensions instead of something part of the browser (unless you pay for Zeds AI thing then the integration is marginally better).

dmix 6mo ago

It's good to try Claude Code just so you focus on skills, agents, and CLAUDE.md Then when you go back to Cursor it will still support all of those things in the settings. Using Cursor you tend to not think about those as much since Cursor does a lot of it for you as part of the IDE integration. But it's good to refine it your own way. But for the most part there isn't much difference.

omcnoe 6mo ago

You don't have to stop using the IDE just because you are using Claude Code. Using both at the same time is best of both worlds in my experience.