How is it that I am able to open the same project side by side, one screen Cursor the other Kiro. As the Agent in both the EXACT same question using the same model, Claude Sonnet 4 (non thinking), and get this from Cursor:
We're having trouble connecting to the model provider. This might be temporary - please try again in a moment.
Request ID: 7dfc15f4-ae56-41d0-aa69-24cc12513aa7
and get a working and generating agent from Kiro.
Cursor used to be the best, by far! It was fast, smart, and actually helped you get things done. For a while, it felt like they just got it, what developers needed/wanted/hoped for, the direction AI assisted coding was moving in. They were ahead of the curve in every way, causing all others to play catchup…
But like a lot of companies that get too big too fast, promised too much and planned to little. They started changing and not for the better.
Somewhere along the line, they stopped focusing on the product and started focusing on squeezing more out of their users. Whether this was because their business model was unsustainable or they desired more. The feature restrictions, multiple weird pricing changes, lack of clarity to users, decisions that clearly had more to do with the bottom line than the community and seemingly showed what is all to common in tech businesses that grow so quick… a lack of leadership. They acted like they could do whatever they wanted, and we’d all just go along with it.
The thing is, this AI IDE space is moving fast. Really fast. And while Cursor was busy figuring out how to extract more from their users or at the very least not being transparent with us, a lot of us were getting fed up and quietly looking around. Turns out, there are other options, more and more everyday… Some of them are already really good — and getting better and at least on the surface seem to have better interaction and communication with their base.
So now, the very people who built up Cursor’s reputation are walking away.
And it’s not because we hate the product, Cursor is AWESOME, it’s because we don’t trust the direction. The choices they’ve made created a gap in the market, and that gap is already being filled. The dev community doesn’t wait around.
Cursor might’ve had a chance to dominate this space for a long time.
Instead, they made a bunch of short-sighted decisions, and now they’re watching users leave — not with a bang, but with a shrug.
You were the best. You could’ve stayed that way. But you got in your own way.