First of all, I’m loving composer, I use it in combination with live preview and can see real time rendering of edits also.
Second of all, we really need some sort of internal versioning, unable to undo is pretty scary. Also id I add my own versions, composer gets confused which files it’s editing.
I had a filename change work tonight, that was cool.
Mostly I’m struggling to add files to composer context that stick, but it might be that my composer disconnects? If composer gets in a weird state I end up having to restart cursor completely to recover.
why is the ui not following standards? in minimized the + makes a new instead of expanding, and the only way to expand floating is keys+i ? at least I can now find my composer instances I might accidentally lose by clicking plus.
The direction is amazing, and far surpasses any other experiences I’ve tried with collaborative editing multiple files.
Also love the ability to modularize the code when it gets just too much for context windows. I’ll create a styles.css add it to composer context and ask it to move styles to css file, and so on, this is great. otherwise Cursor suffers like everyone else with attention when it comes to large files.
I am just a fellow user, but some good observations and feedback .
Just in case you didn’t already know, Composer is still considered a beta feature, so there are some wrinkles to iron out as the Cursor team have acknowledged:
But good to provide this sort of specific, constructive, feedback so that they can look into any issues and resolved them where necessary.
yep i just wrote this down myself - i sometimes forget to commit changes at stable points and making changes with composer is so easy that I realise too late that i need to revert.
Maybe linking the composer “versions” shown to the timeline would make it easier to quickly revert ?
The theme for most of these is that it feels like features are being whacked on top of each other, perhaps by different people within Cursor, without anyone looking at overall cohesion between them (e.g. ‘Composer’ and ‘Chat’), or VSCode (e.g. Cursor chat hijacks VSCode keyboard shortcuts).
Given that half the battle of Cursor with other Coding IDEs is UX, these feel like worthwhile things to improve.
UX/UI improvement suggestions (ranked):
Similar commands should maintain consistency in being reversible
e.g. currently ctrl + L x2 opens and closes chat. But ctrl + i x2 doesn’t open and close Composer
Give an option to put Composer back in the right side bar alongside Cursor Chat and Cursor Review
Explain what something does at the point where a user finds out about it. For example explain ‘Always keep composer in bound’ setting in Cursor > Beta, at that point in the UI (maybe with a tooltip and screenshot?). I’ve learnt what it is now, but it was annoying to find out.
User interface shouldn’t go outside the bounds
Composer sometimes extends above the Cursor window. I don’t think it ever should
When the user submits text it should disappear from the text entry field.
See WhatsApp for a good example
Make commands consistently available. For example the /reference files featuring Composer is great, so why is it not available in the normal ctrl + L chat!
Make commands consistent. For example why does Composer have a hashtag to refer to files but chat doesn’t.
This makes it very hard to learn new features
Don’t hijack the keyboard shortcuts when in ‘Cursor’ mode
Example problem: I press ctrl + L to get chat. I then press my ctrl + b keyboard shortcut to minimise the left sidebar. It no longer works! I need to click out of ctrl + L. This is infuriating!
When scrolling through already sent messages it should be clear to see what the user has entered and what the system is entered
See WhatsApp for a good example
Composer escape should always do the same thing, but sometimes it minimises, and sometimes it gives focus to a background tab.
The system should identify when it hasn’t worked for some reason and then let the user know. All too often nothing is happening but it doesn’t really make it clear to the user and the user needs to figure out and decide when to try again.
Explain what something does at the point where a user finds out about it. For example explain ‘Always keep composer in bound’ setting in Cursor > Beta, at that point in the UI (maybe with a tooltip and screenshot?). I’ve learnt what it is now, but it was annoying to find out.
This is really an important point! I love the new features, but often they feel hidden or unclear. Sometimes, even when I know a feature exists, I miss out on its full potential because I don’t know how to use it properly. This is especially true for more complex features like the Composer.
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