Composer output is different for the same task

When I try to run a simple task like “Create a user onboarding flow” for a specific page, I get 2 different views of output. But I have no idea why or how.

Sometimes, I see the left image style of output (where it generates files and creates a chat window to the right).
Some other times, I see the right image style of output (where it doesn’t do any of that).
(In both cases I give it the exact same task)

Is it supposed to be random? Or am I missing stop step?

From the screenshots you’ve attached, the one on the right doesn’t have any file changes, and only has chat output, so there’s no code to display.

The left screenshot does have code changes, so those are shown in the centre, with the chat pushed to the right.

You can see from the left pane what files, if any, have been modified.

If you were expecting some code changes to the right screenshot’s output, you may need to tweak your query to push the AI in the right direction.

I’ve given the exact same query in the composer in both situations, which is
“I want a user onboarding flow @v0.md
(v0.md is a prompt file)

Are you running the latest version, and were both these taken on the latest version?

There’s been some changes in the latest version to how Composer works, specifically that Composer can only edit files you explicitly give it as context - it can’t just freely edit any file it wants.

From your first screenshot, there’s two files it’s edited and, at least in the latest version, you (hypothetically) must have provided them to the query for Composer to edit them.

I’m running Cursor 0.42.3. And both of these were taken on the same version.

From what I can tell on the screenshots, my guess is a combination of your wording changing slightly and the context changing has caused this.

In your first screenshot, you ask the AI to “Add a user onboarding flow”. Additionally, you provided it with a file for context: page.tsx. As you can see in its output, it decided to first update the page.tsx file, and also create a user-onboarding.tsx file too, in order to complete your request. As it edited and created some code, you see that code layout as described before.

In the second screenshot, you don’t ask the AI to do anything, but instead say you “want a user onboarding flow”. It appears the AI didn’t get that you wanted it coded specifically, and instead believed you wanted a link to v0 with a prompt it has created embedded in the link.

I don’t know what’s in v0.md and therefore cannot comment which of the two options you were expecting to get when you tried this, but I’d suggest explicitly exposing that you either want to create the code for the onboarding feature, or want a URL to v0 from the AI.