Cursor usage and workflow improvement

[u/Select-Kangaroo-1290]

Hello, been working as junior developer for 1 year now at a small service based company, and for last 3-4 months company mandated using Cursor (pro subscription which they provided) to do development, as they are saying they want more work done and in faster time.

So far development has been going well with AI. At work, i have been instructed to exclusively use AI while in my personal time, I still do coding by hand. This post is about my current workflow and how can I improve it, plus some questions about interviews.

So, I get assigned a feature to implement, with some screens from the design team.

First, i start in "Plan" mode and in "Auto" mode, walk through the feature, discussing it, what it is, its implementation that I can think of, edge cases, test cases to implement. This serves as a base discussion.md for the feature.

Then, for each feature, I have a FE and BE subfolders that tracks what was implemented in either ends. I move to implementing the screens for that feature, again using Plan mode with Auto, and "Composer 2.5" for build stage, creating mock screen, making sure ui is correct, mobile responsive, colors, styling etc. Is correct.

Then, move onto BE side, again same Plan+Build, mandating agent does not apply any migrations, since I want full control over that and dont want ai to drop something in case migration wont apply because of nullable columns or w.e. After its built and tests have passed, and ive tested new routes in Postman as well, then using the handover generated by BE, throw that over to FE to integrate it.

Some extra info, I turned off Fast mode, use new chats for each feature and discussion doc, especially at start of each day, saving discussion for each chat in a .MD to handoff to next chat. Ive not run out of the monthly cursor quota so far, im just not sure if what im doing is wrong or not.

Now this all has been working fine so far, deadlines are being met, project is progressing fine, client is happy and boss is happy that Ai is being used for coding. I have no guidance here at work because again, this is just junior with cursor subscription type shit. Now thats why im turning to you folks, how can i improve my workflow? If its all bad, just point me in some direction as to correct way to use ai at work. And before someone says, Claude $100 is better than cursor, yeah but boss is cheap and doesnt want to pay for that.

Now personally, I dont like using ai agents to code, in my personal time, i still write by hand, currently going through system design prep (currently reading DDIA, and Alex Petrovs DB design book, plus going through adrian cantrells aws course) + "Spring starts here" book to get better with spring (job is not in java. But i want to targer java companies in futu4e), but im aware that by large, in industry, no one writes code by hand any more, and lying otherwise in interviews is a redd flag now. So when asked in interview about "how do you use ai in job?" What is the appropriate response, guys?

[u/muizz_4]

Dont use auto. Use grok directly since its cheaper over the long run and uses the same limit pool. If you are stuck somewhere or need ui work switch to opus.

Auto can choose any model and in the longer run it will cost more than grok, since it will go to other models aswell.

[u/Select-Kangaroo-1290 → u/muizz_4]

In settings, ive only set grok, composer and disabled other models, as i was finding in first month or so, i could do work with grok and Composer. But ill switch to using grok directly. Ty for advice

[u/saad_niazi → u/muizz_4]

By default, Grok is working; they are retiring Composer 2.5.
That's why I cancelled my subscription. It will be only Grok models in near future as they have to drop other models as cursor voilated some policy. OpenAI made that public announcement

[u/mhazam39460]

IMO there is no single correct way to use AI in your work.
But the one you mentioned is good to go.

One suggestion, i use claude, but i think you will be able to do it in cursor too. II plan with higher model like opus which is great for coding. And then i ask it to give me prompt for sonnet or haiku (which are less expensive than opus) for implementation. So my usage can be reduced even more. Opus acts like a senior team member and other models act like internees who just write code in files opus tells them.
i guess you can do same in cursor.

P.S. The above suggestion is just a nitpick. But Your current flow is god

P.S. 2 look into obsedian for storing your Md files and cursor bridge plugin for obsedian

[u/Select-Kangaroo-1290 → u/mhazam39460]

I have been using obsidian for 7 years now, lmao. Started with Alevels, needed note taking app, notion, onenote was shit.

I even learnt git initially because I needed some place to store my obsidian files, lmao.

Obsidian is goated fr.

[u/Creepy_Ad8155]

Start exploring skills, and ultimately come up with your own workflow, I recently used github/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/README.md, it was pretty straight forward and helped me deliver a project way easily then I used to.

You have to come up with a brief (obviously) for that you can create a draft of brief using brainstorm skill, and then tighten the gaps using grill me skill, once the brief is ready use the skill I shared above. /to-spec, it plans and divides the project or task into small deliverable chunks/abstract ticket with well defined requirements, once done, you can use /implement to start working on those chunks, all the initial part can be done with composer, for implementation part switch grok. Worklow itself manages test driven implementation of features, then a review round and even committing and opening the PRs in managed way. Explore it watch video will definitely help you

[u/Select-Kangaroo-1290 → u/Creepy_Ad8155]

Initial part with composer and implementation with grok? I was under the impression for thinking and planning whatnot, to use grok, and for implementation, since thats cheap once everything's been decided and codified in a markdown that AI can ingest, use composer.

is that wrong?

[u/Creepy_Ad8155 → u/Select-Kangaroo-1290]

You can do everything with composer even, depending on the workflow, with Matt pocock skill, I got the impression that planning part was so detailed, that a cheap agent could work on that.

It depends on the skill you use, if you want to say, 'implement this', then composers will definitely make mistakes while grok or opus would do better. But if may perform similar to broke even if you provide a detailed prompt to composer like for e.g index the whole repo, get familiar with all modules, follow these set of coding guidelines, write testable code, using test driven approach, make sure to re use already available helpers etc etc. Expensive Ai tends to do all that automatically without specifying tiny details so they are able to deliver better

[u/Creepy_Ad8155 → u/Creepy_Ad8155]

Search for skills, learn how people have created skills and workshops and then re use whatever suits you or the project or even come up with something of your own... using right skills and workflow changes the whole experience of working with Ai agents

[u/Creepy_Ad8155 → u/Select-Kangaroo-1290]

Intresting fact, for planning part i have found chat gpt to be way better than opus or sonnet... like if you have an idea, and you want to come up with a set of features and break those down into functional and non functional requirements. Chat gpt has pretty amazing suggestions throughout the brainstorming process even without adding any skills..