Speed difference between Cursor IDE vs CLI

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1

It really disturbs me at night thinking that Cursor IDE is extremelly slow compared to CLI. Isnt there a way to make IDE faster?

3

Hey, can you clarify what exactly feels slower? Is it the AI agent response speed, applying edits to files, or the overall UI responsiveness?

CLI is naturally lighter since there’s no GUI, extensions, or editor overhead. But you can tune the IDE:

  1. Check extensions. Run cursor --disable-extensions in Terminal and compare. Extensions are often the main cause of slowdowns.
  2. Add heavy folders like dist/, build/, node_modules/, etc. to .cursorignore.
  3. Open Extension Monitor: Settings > Application > Experimental > Extension Monitor Enabled, then Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P and run Developer: Open Extension Monitor. Check what’s using resources.

Also share your Cursor version and OS. That’ll help if the standard steps don’t fix it.