[Question] Guidance needed: When should I choose Composer 1.5 over larger models like Opus or GPT?

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Hi to the Cursor team and the community,

I noticed the model selection list has grown significantly (as shown in the screenshot), featuring powerful options like Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3 Codex.

However, Composer 1.5 seems to be the default or recommended choice for the Agent mode. I would love to hear a brief introduction from the official team regarding Composer 1.5.

Specifically:

  1. What is the core strength of Composer 1.5? Is it specifically fine-tuned for multi-file editing and agentic workflows?

  2. When should I stick with Composer 1.5? Is it purely for speed/cost, or does it handle project context better?

  3. When is it better to switch to the “heavy lifters” like Opus 4.6?

A short “rule of thumb” for model selection would be incredibly helpful for us users. Thanks!

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When you want to auto-summarize in a long chat, you can try it.

:sweat_smile:

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composer is good for the following:

  • small iterative work, where you’re making small changes and watching it closely (pair programming, basically)
  • lots of small/medium edits across files (stuff like “find and replace” a specific word repo-wide)
  • latency matters if you’re in a tight loop

basically it’s tuned for the kinds of stuff that Agent mode does a lot: repeated tool calls, small edits, micro prompting

i love it for subagents particularly. if you need deeper code work i’d go for Codex, and for frontend work I’d go for Opus

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