Supercharging Your Coding with Cursor: A Deep Dive into the Composer Feature
My journey with Cursor and its Composer feature has transformed my development approach. These tools, combined with innovative frameworks and structured accountability, are changing the way I build software and approach problem solving
Introduction
In this blog post, we'll explore my recent experience diving into the Cursor IDE, a VS Code alternative, and particularly focusing on its powerful "Composer" feature. As someone who appreciates the efficiency of Vim, I've found Cursor offers compelling advantages. This post will walk you through my learning process and showcase how Composer is revolutionizing my workflow by handling multi-file edits with unprecedented ease.
Target Audience: Developers, programmers, and anyone interested in improving their coding efficiency with advanced IDE tools.
Value Proposition: This post will demonstrate how Cursor's Composer feature can significantly reduce development time and effort, particularly for complex projects requiring multi-file changes.
Time Investment: Approximately 10-15 minutes to read.
Prerequisites: A basic understanding of coding concepts and familiarity with IDEs.
Why Cursor?
Cursor is an IDE that seeks to improve upon VS Code, bringing in powerful AI features. While code completion tools like Copilot have become standard, Cursor offers more advanced functionalities. One of these is Composer, which dramatically changes how developers handle multi-file edits.
Composer: The Game Changer
Previously, making multi-file changes involved using command-K to select text, applying edits, and using the "@" symbol for context to pull in specific files or a README. This method would suggest file changes which you would then have to manually copy/paste and tweak.
Composer, a beta feature, eliminates this tedious process. It analyzes your request and performs the required changes across multiple files automatically, handling the copy-paste and tweak step for you.
Composer in Action: Google OAuth Example
To test Composer, I tasked it with setting up Google OAuth—a common yet complex process. It involves multiple steps including client IDs, client secrets, and redirect URIs. This isn't just a basic "to-do" app task, but an actual workflow with third party requirements.
After roughly 15 minutes, Composer generated a functional OAuth handshake. While there was a small bug related to the callback, it got 70% of the way there in far less time than if I'd done it manually. This included generating new files, as indicated by the u prefix in the file names.
Enabling Composer
Composer is enabled in Cursor's settings. Simply navigate to the settings, enable the "multifile editing experience," and choose whether to use the floating UI.
Key Benefits
Generated Code: Composer creates new files as needed.
Diff View: Shows changes made to existing files.
Contextual Navigation: Clicking a change takes you to the related line in the relevant file.
Learning Curve and Quirks
Chat vs. Composer: While chat uses the "@" symbol for context, Composer requires the "#" symbol.
First Time Experience Issues: Composer didn't automatically include
use clientdirective, the required dependencies inpackage.json, or apply biome rules by default. However, the missing dependencies were provided through a bash command.
Beyond Composer: Building Map with Trigger.dev
Alongside exploring Cursor, I've been using Trigger.dev for background jobs. Trigger.dev provides built-in telemetry and other features to manage queuing and syncing crown jobs. I've created a playground for testing and a map agent, which aims to become a digital peak version of yourself. It takes in context like calendars, health information, and user goals to provide a personalized experience.
Evolution of the Map Agent
Initially, the map agent was built in the style of a search engine like Perplexity. This involved multiple agents for different tasks, like writers, scrapers, and those handling image carousels. However, I'm moving away from separating this into a nutrition coach, a business coach, a calendar coach, etc, and combining patterns based on the architecture of the open source project Midday.
This new approach will allow users to have a more unified experience. Using composer, I can take pieces from commits, and put together the experience I want.
The Future of Software Development
I believe that developers' roles are shifting from writing every line of code to orchestrating various tools. A detailed markdown file with requirements, related files, libraries, and designs will become the primary input, with tools like Cursor's Composer handling the implementation.
Context is Key
Context is the bandwidth of the future. Current LLMs face limitations in handling large amounts of information. However, this problem is rapidly being addressed by research labs that are expanding context windows and token counts. The next phase of software development will focus on the ability to build more sophisticated software with tighter, more comprehensive specifications.
Connecting the Services
To integrate different services like calendar providers (Google) and health providers (Oura, Whoop, Apple Health Kit), I am using Hono, an API framework. This will simplify integration and make it easier to add future services without the need for complex logic.
Founders Accountability
Every Friday, I meet with fellow founders, Tucker and Alex, to discuss progress, challenges, and next steps. This accountability group has proved to be essential. It follows a simple framework: "What did you get done this week?", "What are you working on next?", and "What are you struggling with?". This helps me keep track of the challenges I need to overcome and inspires me to keep going.
Final Thoughts
My journey with Cursor and its Composer feature has transformed my development approach. These tools, combined with innovative frameworks and structured accountability, are changing the way I build software and approach problem solving. The next generation of tools will let us orchestrate complex processes and focus on more high level tasks. I encourage you to explore these tools and see the difference they can make in your own workflow!
Next Steps
Explore the Cursor IDE and Composer
Check out Trigger.dev
Research Hono for API development
Create a personal accountability framework
Happy coding!