Definition
Plain language
A popular AI-powered code editor.
As stated in the literature
An IDE built around LLM-driven completion and codebase-aware edits, with first-class support for predicted outputs and inline assistant interactions.
Why it matters: It's one of the IDEs driving how millions of developers actually interact with LLMs day to day, making its design choices broadly influential.
For example, a developer in Cursor highlights a function, says 'add retries with backoff,' and the editor applies the change inline using a fast predicted-output decoding path.
Heard on the show
“… And that gap between busy GPU and broken agent is the thing every coding agent you've heard of — Cursor, Devin, Claude Code, OpenHands — runs into some version of, even if their teams don't always say …”Episode 016 — Why Your Coding Agent Stalls While the GPU Runs Hot