Cursor

Cursor is an AI-native code editor — a fork of VS Code with LLM assistance wired in at the editor level instead of bolted on as a plugin. The main surfaces: inline edits (Cmd+K), the chat/agent panel (Cmd+L), Tab autocomplete, and a fully agentic mode that can read/edit files, run terminal commands, and call MCP servers. The reason it's a fork and not an extension: VS Code's extension API doesn't let you restructure UX around an agent (multi-file diffs, agent pane, Cmd+K over selections), so Cursor owns the whole UI.

Around the editor sits a configuration layer that shapes the agent's behaviour per project: rules for persistent guidance, skills for on-demand expertise, modes for different interaction styles, subagents for parallel work, and plugins (VS Code extensions, @-context providers, MCP servers) for extending what the agent can touch. A built-in browser driven by an MCP server lets the agent interact with web pages directly. Outside the desktop app, the same agent also runs as a cloud agent on mobile/web against your repo. The mental model: one editor, one agent, many levers to steer it.