I’ve recently discovered Cursor that aims to surpass Microsoft’s Copilot, and I’m thoroughly impressed with its features. After a few days of testing, I appreciate its capabilities, including image input, web surfing, and extensive local file search functionality.
Reading about the Shadow Workspace concept (Shadow Workspace: Iterating on Code in the Background) has reinforced my belief that the Cursor team is truly committed to integrating AI assistance into programming at an unprecedented level. This innovative approach shows great promise for enhancing the coding experience.
Currently, I have a few practical requirements that I believe could further improve Cursor:
- Code Translation:
I often need to rewrite open-source code into another language. To facilitate this, it would be incredibly useful if the AI could quickly and thoroughly navigate between the source and destination workspaces (my new project). This feature could be even more powerful if it could directly access open repositories (or private repos with permission) online, eliminating the need to load them into the local Cursor workspace.
This functionality would be particularly valuable when users want to refine or adapt elements from a source project. For example, imagine writing a new web core in pure Rust by rewriting parts of the Chromium project(I know it is crazy). While ambitious, this kind of task could be significantly streamlined with such a feature.
- Enhanced Context-Aware Syntax Fixing:
The Shadow Workspace concept is cutting-edge, and it inspires an intermediate requirement. When pasting code snippets, syntax issues often arise. Fixing these sometimes requires more than just file-level context, which is where Microsoft’s Copilot seems to fall short.
In my work with Rust and Flutter projects, resolving certain issues necessitates a deep search of package dependencies (in pubspec.yaml for Flutter and Cargo.toml for Rust). An ideal solution would not only fix syntax issues but also provide constructive suggestions on how to modify the code or even recommend changes to crates/packages to achieve the desired functionality.
- Seamless Integration of Private Repositories and Web Resources:
To further enhance the AI’s assistance capabilities, I propose automatic inclusion of all user’s private repositories and web resources (via the @web feature) during chat interactions. This would provide the AI with a comprehensive view of the user’s coding ecosystem, enabling more accurate and contextually relevant suggestions.
These enhancements would significantly boost Cursor’s ability to assist programmers, making it an even more powerful tool for complex coding tasks and project migrations.