Cursor Major Capability Update: Agent
Feature Overview
Cursor version 4.3 has launched a series of innovative Agent features, significantly enhancing developers' coding experience. Let me introduce the update content, especially the main capabilities of the agent.
What Does Agent Mean
No online videos or articles have explained what Agent means. I'll be the first to explain it to everyone.
Agent translates to "intelligent agent". In programming tools like Cursor, it can be understood as an intelligent assistant with specific capabilities and goals, capable of proactively understanding and executing programming tasks. Unlike traditional code completion or simple Q&A, the Agent is more like a "thinking" programming assistant.
Please pay special attention to the two key words: "proactive" and "execute".
Practical Application Scenarios
For example, when you say: "I want to create a web application with user registration and login functionality", the Agent will not only provide code snippets but also:
- Plan the overall architecture
- Suggest technology stack
- Consider security issues
- Automatically generate related module code
- Provide best practice recommendations
Many of these were previously manually implemented, which is why this Cursor update is considered Cursor 2.0, a revolutionary update.
Layout Changes
In my Cursor Composer Tutorial article, I introduced the Composer window being on the right side, whereas in the old version, the Composer window was in the center of Cursor.
Current Layout:
They share the right-side tab bar. When you press cmd+L and cmd+i, you can switch between tabs. For more about Chat, you can refer to Chat Usage and Tutorial
Enabling Agent
After opening Composer, we need to click the agent icon to switch to agent mode, otherwise it will remain in the old Composer function.
Automatic Context Collection
This is the agent's biggest capability - it can proactively and more intelligently identify and collect more contextual content. However, note that this is an early version from Cursor, so there might be various issues that will likely be resolved in the future.
Terminal Commands
All commands that need to be executed will be executed in Composer. You need to click "accept", whereas previously you had to copy these commands to the terminal and execute them yourself.
Parallel Multi-tasking
Terminal command execution and dialogue can proceed simultaneously without interfering with each other, thereby improving development efficiency.
Proactive Problem Solving
When issues arise during generation, development, or usage, it will proactively think. For example, in the image below, it begins to think about why the dependency was installed incorrectly and actively starts solving the problem.
Thinking Like a Programmer
After you provide requirements, it will think about the problem like a programmer, list implementation steps, and then slowly execute according to those steps.
Summary
The Agent is like a smart programming assistant that doesn't just mechanically execute instructions, but can think and solve problems like an experienced programmer.
This concept is rapidly evolving. Cursor is just one of many platforms trying to introduce AI into the programming workflow. In the future, this intelligent assisted programming model might completely transform our development approach.