Cline has this really nice separation between Planning and Acting
No code changes are made in Plan mode and you are free to define all the requirements.
When you are ready you can switch to Act mode and have it implement the plan
I have something working in Cursor to make it act a bit like this but it’s not ideal Plan vs Act modes
All of the major AI platforms have this separation between planning and acting it’s strange that Cursor just jumps into making changes.
I say “I want you to do x” it works out what I mean by that and gathers all the context it needs, I guide it, we iterate a few times and when I’m happy it often does the act in one shot.
Write simple prompt → plan → plan → plan → act
vs
Writing a really detailed prompt having me work out all the files I need to pull in context and adding them (the AI should be doing this manual work)
Write complex prompt → act → reset → Write even more complex prompt → act
or
Write complex prompt → act → fix mess → fix mess