My Top Cursor Tips (Oct 2025)

Why Cursor over Claude Code?

Code-generation diffs are easier to review and roll back (the checkout system is great).
You can test and use other models for different tasks (o3 for complex tasks, gemini-2.5-pro for creativity, grok-code-fast…


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Mark Kop

Why Cursor over Claude Code?

  • Code-generation diffs are easier to review and roll back (the checkout system is great).
  • You can test and use other models for different tasks (o3 for complex tasks, gemini-2.5-pro for creativity, grok-code-fast-1 for quick tasks, etc.).*
  • Good IDE integration (e.g., accept/reject actions work great across the UI).

*That said, I’m only using claude-4.5-sonnet since its launch.

Cursor accept/reject UI

How to 10x Productivity on Cursor

Good pre-prompt

Use .cursorrules or similar to enforce behavior. For example:

// .cursorrules for a frontend project 

- Always use the project’s Tailwind colors.
- Always use named exports with object parameters: `sum({ a, b })` instead of `sum(a, b)`.
- Use "pnpm" instead of "npm" for all package-management commands.
- Use the "use client" directive when using client-side state like useState, useEffect, etc.
- Don’t modify package.json dependencies directly.
- Always write fail-safe code using optional chaining and default values.
- Use DayJS for all date and time operations — don’t use `new Date()`, `Date.now()`, or other date functions.
- When searching the codebase for context, do at least three semantic searches and three grep searches (do more if needed).

// .cursorrules for a blockchain dapp project 

- Don’t run dev-server commands; let me do it. If you want to run something, ask me first.
- You won’t be able to run smart-contract deployment commands when needed; ask me and I will do it.
- Run `npm run typecheck` after making changes in the frontend and fix errors. Avoid `any` types.
- Run `npm run compile:check` after making changes to the contracts and fix errors.
- When updating a smart contract, remember to generate the ABI and update the FE accordingly.
- When coding a smart contract, check BYTECODE_OPTIMIZATION.md for best practices.
- Don’t write .md files unless asked to.
- If updating a smart contract, at the end ask me to deploy the contract with `npm run redeploy:all`.

Good MCPs

I’ve also heard these are good:

  • Svelte MCP
  • Stripe MCP
  • Sentry MCP
  • AWS / Cloudflare / Vercel MCPs

Enable them on demand to avoid filling up context.

Fireship has a good video showing several of them:

Automation

Create .md files with reusable instructions to automate small wins, such as:

  • Creating and enhancing GitHub PRs and releases with links and more (Atlassian MCP + GitHub CLI)
  • UI testing (Chrome MCP / Playwright MCP / Cursor’s browser)
  • SVG → React component conversion using a template
  • API testing

Browser Cursor UI

Other 10x Modifiers

  • Use the “Plan” feature — always try it first.
  • Voice transcription tools to dictate detailed prompts.
  • Screenshot and text-recognition tools to provide extra context.

Plan feature UI

Other Cursor features I don’t use much

  • Bugbot (PR review — too expensive)
  • cursor-agent (too specific tasks)
  • @doc (usually web search does the trick)
  • /commands (I kinda prefer .md files)
  • Background Agents (It's quicker just to open the project locally)

See also

heymarkkop

My Top Cursor Tips (v0.43)

Mark Kop ・ Dec 16 '24

#tutorial #ai #productivity #learning


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Mark Kop


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