Composer feedback

General
1

Hi! Composer mode is really cool, and is functionality I’ve really been hoping would come to Cursor. I’ve been relying on Aider for equivalent functionality so far, but I’d love to see this to make it into Cursor + VSCode’s rich UI.

Composer is kind of difficult to use in its current state though, a few thoughts:

  1. It’s a little confusing to go from using @ everywhere in my chats to now having to use #, and unclear how/why they’re different, especially since I can still seem to pull in files with @

  2. Composer seems to insist on creating new files in certain cases.

For instance, I asked it to update my files at web/app/routes/api.contentitems.tsx and web/app/bl/contentItemIngestion.ts, two different times, and each time it insisted on creating new files at web/app/routes/api/contentitems.tsx (the api folder didn’t even exist) and web/app/services/contentItemIngestion.ts. This is including the time I sent it follow-up feedback to alter the original files, but it couldn’t figure out how to alter the original files.

  1. Composer seems to delete files and then forget they existed. After hitting reset, it actually deleted two unchanged files, and then after that point I wasn’t able to reference them with @ or #. I could get them to show up again in the import/mention list after opening their tabs.

  2. It’d be great if we could move around the Composer box, put it into an existing tab, mount it next to the chat/review tabs, etc.

Thanks for all y’all’s hard work on Cursor, it gets better by the week!

5 Likes
2

Thanks for the feedback! This is very helpful :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

I think the # syntax for adding new files makes referencing files a cleaner experiences vs using @ for referencing all types of context i.e. files, functions, classes, etc.

2 Likes
4

# is equal to @file :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
5

It should have a shortcut to add all open files to context, and a cursor wide feature to sync open files to contexts (composer and chat).

And linting errors could be auto-detected and fixed, like Aider.

I also lost history when I tired to fix the errors by continuing the chat and then trying to revert that as it made even more errors

2 Likes
6

I see it was added a / command or I missed it before!

When I paste a code snippet to composer it would be cool to referencec the file like the chat does. But I hate that the chat does not add the code snippet in place, so my explanation often doesn’t make sense in chat mode.

2 Likes
7

I have also noticed the code snippet not being pasted in place, I will often preface the code snippet with something like ‘as shown below:’, and then the code snippet is pasted at the top, and I have to change the structure and wording of my prompt etc.

8

Good point, I will fix :+1:

1 Like