Hi all,
I’ve created prompt to create a readme but the structure isn’t available to copy and paste. In visual studio code you can send output to a text file. Is it possible to do this with cursor?
the prompt Create a readme.md file for the repo @Codebase
Example output from cursor where you can see the text is free form and also available to copy and paste but I cant copy and paste the whole text easily.
Hello,
Not sure if I am understanding you correctly (I am a bit sleep deprived today), but the Composer feature (Ctrl + I) has multi-file create and edit functionality.
Here’s a link to a post I put up that demonstrates an example prompt and its response:
https://forum.cursor.com/t/multi-file-edits-0-37-update/6425/24
Perhaps you could make the request in Composer and it could generate the README.md file and its contents?
I’ve got the same issue. The problem being that the model uses md to format both it’s replies and the file it’s creating (in this case). Sometimes (most of the time, but not all of the time) the formatting gets ‘confused’, and the ‘end of code block’ marker used in the generated md file is interpreted by cursor as the end of the code block, which messes up the README.md … The only solution I’ve found is to copy / paste small sections at a time, which is a pain.
What I want (and what the OP wants I think) is to just get the ‘raw’ output of the whole message from cursor. That’s what I came here to ask at least, and I found this from 6 months ago…
Creating README.md works very well. Would you mind to share more about the case where it doesnt work for you? what are you asking the ai and what goes wrong?
I’m using r1 in the following example, but I’ve seen Claudy have the exact same problem. This is in Chat, not Composer, which may be the cause of the issue:
Please can you write a comprehensive document describing the current codebase. This should be written for developers coming into the project fresh, explaining to them all the relevant details of the project in a clear, consistent, logical way, starting at a high level and going into detail with appropriate sub-sections as needed. We can assume relatively competent technical audience, but not necessarily Flask / JS or ‘Full Stack’ expertise. Note that a lot of the organisation of the current code isn’t necessarily canonical or even consistent, with various developers having hacked together various bits of the site over time. This is fine, but just to explain that a ‘one size fits all’ explanation of some of the details will not be sufficient. Thanks.
You can see the lack of the ‘code insert’ box:
Ah ■■■■… I can’t add more images… I was trying in a second comment but it no work:
but it ‘cuts in’ with code in places:
> 
Following a copy-pasta extravaganza…
I’ve gone through and manually improved the markdown and added back the code and directory structure sections that were accidentally dropped. Please review the document and compare it to the @Codebase to ensure it’s accurate, and include examples taken from the codebase where you think it’s appropriate to improve understanding. We might need a more detailed section on testing.
> 
Which looks promising initially, but note that the code block only has a ‘copy’ button, not an apply button, and it soon degrades into garbage I can’t coherently manually copy-pasta.
Shall I switch to claude and ask him to do it cleanly? In the past that has failed like I said.
I’ll try again in composer…
I have gotten Cursor Claude to create .md files all the time with zero problems.
Maybe try a more explicit instruction in your prompt, the way I phrase it is: "Document what you just did in a new file in “_docs/task.md” … and it will happily create the new .md file directly, not in the composer window.
or “create a new document called readme.md that details XYZ…”
Is this in ‘chat’ mode?
I work mainly in Composer Agent mode, but should work in Composer Normal. Chat mode you probably have to apply it yourself.
In Chat you should reference a file to be updated, like previous posters note docs/task.md or similar (reference it with @ to get the file attached). If it gives you formatted text in chat itself you could ask it to give you a MD (markdown) code block output so it knows how you want it.
Here is me saying, update a different section of the readme than you just did:
This isn’t so bad as a garbled .md tbh, because at least I can copy the whole message. It’s not split into parts like what happens soemtimes with teh md files formats.
any news on this one? March 2025 keeps failing
you may need to give the cursor team an example of thats not working in what way.
in general, creating MD files in any folder works.
Are you in Composer Agent mode
Not seen this in months.
