Chat with codebase vs Chat difference

[EdgarHQ]

Hi, I’ve read the docs on the Cursor website several times, but it’s still not clear what the difference is between the “Chat with codebase” and “Chat” options. Both seem to have context, but differ in subtle ways - could someone clarify?

[litecode]

Good question, I’d like to have a better understanding of that too.

First, it seems it would be good to list the terms involved, and then describe each of them.

I am away from computer now, but I add below this first pass of terms and their descriptions as a ‘first pass’ on the process of understanding more.

Terms:

Chat with codebase:

https://docs.cursor.com/chat/codebase

@ symbols:

https://docs.cursor.com/context/@-symbols/basic

@Codebase:

https://docs.cursor.com/context/@-symbols/@-codebase

Codebase Indexing:

https://docs.cursor.com/context/codebase-indexing

Related Links:

The Chat section at:

https://www.cursor.com/features

Related Posts:

Codebase Indexing

Hey there, nice editor. How does the Codebase Indexing feature works, for it to not store any of the code on the servers? And are the embeddings made through the API? Thanks!

Codebase indexing VS chat with codebase

So i’ve got a question. 1- you can already Chat with codebase without index being Enable in the settings. Is that right? 2- what’s the advantage of Enabling it? a better answer? How much is the difference? is it worth it? 3- are they working differently? (indexing codebase vectorize and embedd the code while chat with codebase just search through the file in the workspace) ASking this question because if we can still have a good chat with the codebase and entire workspace and the quality is …

Context without codebase indexing

If I were to turn of codebase indexing, will it still look through all the files in my workspace and find additional context for the prompt?

Codebase indexing doesn't include entire codebase

Hi, I am trying to use the codebase indexing feature on what I think isn’t an unreasonably large codebase. It seems like after indexing, Cursor has only considered some of the files and it really just seems clueless about others when I ask the AI. Just struggling to know if this is a recognized issue or just a user error, thanks!

[mwk24]

Yes, I’m finding this all a bit confusing. I’m sure I could figure it out given enough research… but the whole sales pitch of cursor is making my life easier!

I would highly recommend abstracting away all this stuff. As an end user, I just want to tell the tool what do do, or ask questions about code. I don’t want to have to decide what internal implementation to use.

Perhaps an LLM can look at the question/command entered into chat and make a smart decision about what kind of indexing/search to use?

[alex13indas]

I second this! To add my thoughts on the intuitiveness of the UI… I really like the visual tutorials when you first download cursor. They are very helpful but when it gets down to the last one, “Chat with your codebase” it gets a little confusing.

The use case I have right now is I asked a couple questions about specific blocks of code and had the chat open … easy. I then closed that chat because I no longer needed it so just continued coding as I normally would. I got to the point where I am looking to ask a general question, but I couldn’t figure out how to reopen the chat in the context of the codebase? I was unsure if highlighting a block of code is the way you open it up, and if I did open the chat that way would the context be scoped to at most that one file?