The #1 advantage is not hitting rate limits. I was chatting with Gemini 1206 and ran into this:
Hit Google rate limit
We’ve hit a rate limit with Google. Please try again in a few moments.
I’m trying to understand what’s going on here…
- The Cursor IDE was using Gemini for the chat. Not its own custom model, right? That’s what the top red box in the screenshot indicates,
gemini-exp-12016. - Cursor’s backend proxies my chat prompt to Google, and hits an API rate limit. With so many users, totally understandable.
- I’m happy to provide my own Google AI Studio API key. Why would that disable anything else?
If the IDE was using gemini-exp-12016 for the chat with Cursor’s backend API key, can it use it with my own Google API key? Isn’t the magic in the prompt?