For complex technical tasks, it’s helpful to create a detailed prompt. However, a detailed prompt is time consuming to write.
If we could use all the existing features of Cursor to write, edit, and iterate on this prompt, we could quickly create detailed prompts. We could use these prompts to get stable, predictable, and powerful one-shot results.
Feature
A “Planner” mode where you prompt the AI to create a plan as a text document. You can edit this text document manually just like you can edit a code file (with Cursor Tab, highlighting regions, diffs, etc.). You use Planner to write out and fix the AI’s plans for complex features before it tries to implement it in code.
This would make it easy to find and solve high level problems in implementation before it goes crazy with your codebase. The detailed prompt would make it easy for the AI to correctly implement it - except unlike reasoning, it won’t go off the rails, because you’re watching it.
Additionally, it would focus workflow on high-level architecture, rather than unreliable vibe coding or tedious prompt engineering. It would make me feel much more aware of and in control of my codebase, while simultaneously letting me generate much more code in one-shot on existing large projects.
I’m genuinely excited about the idea of getting this feature. It would let me build out complex features in codebases without painstakingly telling the AI everything it has to do or constantly rerolling the dice with vibe coding.
Even if there was no code functionality, I would still love this tool just for planning out coding architecture or ■■■■, even other things in life.
2 Likes
Forgive me if Im misunderstanding but you can literally ask Cursor to write a document containing whatever you want it to and then give it that document to use as reference for ongoing development? Its the backbone of the project.
2 Likes
Amazing workaround for now - Cursor got confused at first when I asked it to add a .txt file, but I just had to change it back to Edit mode and it worked.
I’d still love to see this as a built out feature because I think there are serious workflow improvements that should be part of the core offering, but I will be happily using this workaround and reporting back with it.
Thanks!
It will write a Markdown tile (.md) without question so maybe use that. I think its formatted better for an AI to understand as .txt has no formatting. I think it can understand importance based on whether its a Large Header for example.
It would probably streamline it if there was something built into the UI as you say but this is still a very useful method.
Wait until you realise it can run commands from a .md file as well 
Happy vibing
I set up a markdown file - super excited to use but it has major usability problems right now.
Markdown is 10x more readable when you view it, so I wanted to preview it. However, you can’t edit the markdown preview directly, so you need to view it side-by-side to both read and edit the document.
To do this, you need to rebind the command for “Markdown: Open Preview to the Side” because the default command is cmd + K + V, and cmd + K is already taken by cursor.
- Search preferences with
cmd + shift + P
- Select “Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts”
- Change the key binding for “Markdown: Open Preview to the Side” (I changed it to
cmd + M)
It also seems like Cursor Tab doesn’t work with markdown files.
I’ll update with how it goes as I use it more, but it would be really amazing if this was built into Cursor natively and I could directly edit the Markdown preview.
Would love to hear other ways to improve this workflow, but would love even more if the Cursor team implemented and expanded on this idea.
1 Like
Honestly this is the missing piece of the puzzle right now - complex planning that setups a proper guide for the work to be done. Yes you can have it write a markdown file, but it needs to be built into the whole system so it’s part of the system prompt.
2 Likes
I do have something like that in my project where all the architecture is written down in proper docuents to read and organice, so it always know where to search for information and how to implement any new feature or fix a bug… is really a lot of good information, that get ignored 95% of the time. even when I specifically tell him to search the architecture in this or that document, not enough context atm for complex planning or instructions
2 Likes