Composer Refresh -> Unify History -> Unify Chat and Composer

General
1

The new Command/R shortcut that refreshes Composer is flawed, and brings up a deeper issue in Cursor.

I have my browser open side by side and often I will make a change in the code, and move to the browser, muscle memory Command R to refresh, and instead of refreshing the browser, I’ve refreshed Composer. My alt-tab to switch focus, or my click in the other window didn’t register.

Thankfully Composer remembers now but it’s a pain to open get back to where I was. I need to do these steps:

  1. Click the 3 dot menu top right corner of Cursor
  2. Mental energy: How do I get Composer history: “Open Composer As Bar”
  3. Click the 3 dot menu next to the +
  4. Click Show History
  5. Can’t see the full list in the list popup
  6. Move the Composer window down
  7. Click the 3 dot menu again
  8. Mental energy to read the list… is it alphabetical? chronological? reverse chronological? So I then I open the top item
  9. Mental energy: Wait a minute… these chats don’t look like the right chats… wtf… oh snap… this is for another project. Why would it do that? Oh I see, I had another Cursor workspace open in a different window… no idea how it switched without even noticing it
  10. Mental energy: Find the workspace/project I started with
  11. Composer docked itself back as a pane
  12. Repeat steps 1 through 8
  1. Ok I found the correct conversation
  2. Press escape to close the list popup
  3. Press the 3 dot menu
  4. Press Open Composer As Pane

Do you see the problem here?

How to fix this:
A) Persist buttons between states. It’s extremely frustrating to figure out “what state am I in now? how do I get back to the previous state I was in, so that I can then click that button I need, so that I can get the action I need to get done”.

B) Refactor the Composer mode selection flow (Pane, Control Panel, Tab)

C) Better yet, *Unify Chat and Composer. The pattern of use seems to be Chat for lighter, one-file things, and Composer for complex, multi-file things. I think this dichotomy is mistaken: instead of literally side by side things, it’s one thing (Composer) is an umbrella for the other (Chat).

Given this, if I want to do a simple task in Composer, then Composer should (and I already think can) perfectly handle that. If the case against this is, "yeah but there’s a whole file UI that goes along with complex tasks, that is a hindrance for simple tasks, then the better solution is push through those UX design blockers. In this aspect, maybe the file UI is collapsable.

(And btw, the only reason I still use Chat, is bc the History saving is still unreliable, so now I use more mental energy to think through, ok, this task is important, but it’s *really important, and I would rather go slower in Chat and know I can come back to it, then go fast and chance not finding it later.)

I feel like your team is investing heavily in SOTA ML/AI research, and it shows… but you are not investing nearly enough on SOTA UX.

I hope you can figure this out… I think someone will come along and figure this out holistically.

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