I am new to Cursor and VS code, just started using Cursor last weekend, but these are my understandings:
When you chat in ‘Interpreter Mode’, the response that is returned includes executable Python code which your can then execute which will ‘do stuff’ on your computer.
I am assuming it is more powerful than the other chat modes (in terms of the changes it can make on your system) because it is essentially only limited to what locally running Python code can do on your system.
I needed to install the Python and Jupyter extensions first, both from Microsoft (ms-python and ms-toolsai).
I think the logic is that Cursor talks to Jupyter which can then talk to the Python interpreter (hence the name).
Unfortunately my experience wasn’t smooth as I had two different Python versions installed, and when selecting the later version to use in the Python and Jupyter extension interpreter settings, the Cursor interface was prompting me to install a ‘kernel’, which didn’t seem to resolve the issue and I ended up having to pip install something with guidance from Cursor chat.
I feel like it is a cool feature to have, but the heavy overt reliance on Jupyter (which I think would be foreign to many and fairly difficult to grasp conceptually) and its nuanced configuration requirements made the setup really difficult for me.
I documented my experience in a series of fairly rambling posts here.