Cursor Agent: 10 Pro Tips!

Let's cover 10 pro tips for working with

the cursor agent. So, I've got cursor

open and my agent on the right. And the

first tip is to use plan mode. So, in

the agent input, I'm going to hit

command N to make a new chat. And then I

can hit shift tab to switch and toggle

into plan mode. Now, what plan mode can

do is it can actually go look at my

codebase, research and understand how my

app is set up, and then help me create a

highquality plan to implement a feature.

So, this is on my personal website. I'm

going to say let's make a new page to

show my top artists on Spotify and I'm

going to hit enter. Now, I've already

set up Spotify in my app and I'm using

it to display the track that I'm last

listened to on my homepage. So, we're

going to see that it's planning the next

moves here and it's going to come back

to us with a few questions to help

clarify what the implementation's going

to look like. So, it reads my current

Spotify implementation. It reads some of

the code that I've already set up and

it's going to help me figure out how I

would actually add this feature. So,

let's do uh slash

we'll do slash music and then we're

going to do let's do top 10. Yeah, top

10 works. Time range. Um let's do all

time and last three months. Two buckets.

Sure.

And then

for displaying what we want to show, we

can do um use your best judgment. I'm

just going to see what the model comes

up with and we can change it and tweak

it from there. So, it's starting to make

the plan and we see as it's making the

plan, it creates a new markdown file and

it's giving some details on what needs

to be created. It's calling specific

components and files and referencing

them in our application. And it even

makes some to-dos that we can use to

implement the feature. So, this seems

fine. We can just read through here. It

looks okay. If I wanted to make any

changes, I could go in here and say, um,

we don't need a brief intro about music

taste. So, we can get rid of that. I'll

save the plan. The to-dos seemed fine.

Okay. So, now if this looks good and

we're happy with it, we can hit build.

And build is going to accept this plan.

And then for our given model, which I'm

using claude 4.5 sonnet here, it's going

to go and actually implement the plan.

So let's let this cook. Okay, so the

model finished, but it actually didn't

work. I tried to load the page and I got

a permissions error. So I needed to

reauthorize my Spotify token to have the

additional permissions. So I just pasted

in the error I saw and now it works. So

if I go back to my app, I now have this

list of my top artists. So thank you

plan mode. The second pro tip I want to

show is accessing the context menu and

specifically a feature at branch. So I'm

going to go ahead and command shiftp

create branch and we'll call this top

artist. And then inside of our chat

window I'm going to make a new chat. And

in this new chat if you type the at@

symbol. So let's just do that. What you

get is this menu with all these

different options. And one of them is

get and specifically at branch. So on

this branch, what I want to do is review

all of the changes and see if there are

any issues.

So I'll kick that off. Now, inside of

that menu, there's actually a lot of

stuff. I can just pull it up here. We

have files and folders. You can

reference public documentation, past

chats, llinter errors, uh all sorts of

different things, especially tagging in

specific files or folders that will go

into the context. So if you know, for

example, you're going to use this

Spotify file, you can tag that into the

context and put it in the context window

for working with an agent. So I find

these get commands pretty helpful. And

it looks like the code seems pretty

good. We're having the AI review the AI

generated code, but maybe there's one

issue with the cache times that are

different. Nice. Okay, so overall seems

pretty good. That was pretty helpful.

The third pro tip I want to show is

creating custom commands. So in the

cursor folder, inside of here, I'm going

to make a new folder and we're going to

call it commands. And inside of here, I

can add in markdown files as commands.

So we're going to call this one prd.

And inside of here, I can I can call

this file whatever I want. I can put

whatever prompt I want in here. So,

we're going to use this to make PRs. So,

uh your job is to create a PR with a

descriptive title. Always use the GitHub

CLI.

Now, we could add in specific rules or

specific guidelines, commit guidelines

in here as well, but um let's also say

if you haven't already made a commit, do

that first. Great. So, we have this

command. Now, over here in the agent

panel, I can do slash and it's going to

show up as an option as a custom command

I can run. So, slash PR and we even see

this little hover of what the custom

prompt here is. So, slashpr. Let's run

that and see what happens. Now, my hope

here is it will use a shell command to

use the GitHub CLI to go ahead and first

make a commit and then make a PR. So,

it's going to check and get status here.

Great. We have some, if I go over to my

source control view, got some stuff on

this branch, uh, and some changes that

we need to commit. So, it's going to go

ahead and

look at the changes, try to figure out

what the PR is about, and then make this

change for us. Okay, so this just

finished and I see I have a link to my

new poll request. Nice. The fourth agent

pro tip is that you can pass images to

the agent. So we have our list of top

artists, but maybe we want it to look

more like the Spotify uh wrapped. So

let's copy this image. We can go back to

here and paste it in so we can see what

the image looks like here. And we're

going to say make the top artists and

music page

look closer to the image with uh artist

photos please.

Now this is not scientific but I think

if you add please and thank you the

models perform better. You are burning

more energy in the data centers. So, you

know, there's some trade-offs here, but

we're going to see if please and thank

you help us get a better response. So,

it's going to go and make some changes

to our Spotify code to how it's fetching

the data for the artist. So, we need to

get the images as well. And then it's

also going to update the top artist. So,

this component that displays each kind

of element in the list. That makes

sense. So, it's kind of cooking away

here. And it probably also needs to

update the configuration

to handle these images from a remote

URL. So, we've got the Spotify images

here. So, it's going to go and update

that. That seems right. Next config.

Uh, okay. I'll keep that. Seems good.

And I think that's everything. Let's go

check it out. Uh, reload the page.

Okay. So, it was very honest to the

image uh where it's got these big

numbers kind of like the wrapped and we

do have images. Um so, that's not bad

actually. Um yeah. Yeah, I can now tweak

it from here if I want to make it look

even better, but it's a good start. The

fifth agent pro tip is that you can fork

or duplicate chats. So, let's say I like

what I have here, but I want to try a

couple different options. I can keep all

of the context I have so far and I can

click on this dot dot dot and go to

duplicate chat and then make some

changes from here. That's one option. In

general, I try to recommend using the

smallest number of tokens in the context

as possible. So maybe you want to do

that. Maybe you want to start from

scratch. Either one are valid options.

The sixth pro tip is you're going to

want to make sure you're keeping an eye

on this context window gauge. So this

gauge shows that for the 200k context

window of Claude Sonnet 4.5, we've used

about 12%. Now, as this conversation

grows and grows and grows and grows, you

also have the option to do a slash

command in here, like summarize, which

is going to take your current

conversation and compact it down to the

smallest, smallest bit. And this is kind

of a pro tip 6.5, but you want to be

very intentional about how you use that.

The seventh agent pro tip is that if you

want visibility into your usage in

settings, you can toggle usage summary

from auto, which will only show up when

you're close to your limits to always.

And you can see it down at the bottom.

I've used 38% of my usage limit. And you

can also see when that resets. So, if

you're a person who's trying to be very

costconscious, you can see that here.

The eighth agent pro tip is keyboard

shortcuts. So you can use command I to

open up the agent window and then

command slash to change the model that

you've selected. So maybe I want GPT5

highfast or maybe I want claude 45

sonnet. I use these two shortcuts all

the time, but there's a bunch of

shortcuts you can configure inside of

the settings in any way you want. The

ninth agent pro tip is to start new

conversations frequently. So, in this

past conversation around the artist's

photos, I used about 12% of the context

window. Now, something I see a lot of

beginners do is they keep this

conversation going and going and going

and adding feature after feature after

feature here to the point where they're

running up against the limits of the

context window and the quality of the

model degrades over time as you add more

stuff into the context. So, I generally

try to recommend starting new

conversations for new features. And as a

reminder, you can do commandn keyboard

shortcut to start a new chat. The 10th

agent pro tip is that you can actually

go back in time in a conversation with

an agent. So we have our top artists

here and maybe I decide

actually I don't know if I like those

numbers that big. So let's make the

numbers for the rankings smaller. Sure.

And we're going to go and kick off this

change and we'll see what it ends up

making. Now, if I decide, for example,

that I don't like that change, I can

just go back here and see. They're a

little bit smaller. Maybe that's better.

Maybe that's not. Uh, if I decide that I

don't want that change, we'll just let

this finish.

Great. It's done. I can go back to here.

So, I can click this button to go back

to this checkpoint. And it says, do you

want to discard all changes up to this?

Yes. Let's go back here. And now we have

our big numbers back. So this can be

small changes or you can go very far up

in a conversation and kind of roll back.

Now this is very helpful and I still

also recommend using and learning about

Git. Git helps you save those changes uh

in a more uh persistent way. So you

probably want a little bit of both.

Okay, I know I only said 10, but we're

going to do a lightning round with some

other really fun pro tips. Did you know

in settings you can have the agent play

a completion sound when it's done? You

can also have it show system

notifications when it finishes or if

there's some command that you need to

give permission to run. Pretty nice. Did

you also know you can ask the agent to

generate visualizations for your

codebase? So I asked it to generate a

mermaid diagram of the entire Spotify

flow. And look at this. Look how

detailed this is. The user to app to the

API endpoints. How the ooth flow works.

What the handoff is for access tokens

and refresh tokens. Pretty nice. makes

it easy for documentation. All right,

the final final one in our bonus

lightning round of agent pro tips is the

new agent layout. So, you can try this

out in beta today. It's a new way of

working and managing agents in your

codebase with all of your agents on the

left sidebar, your main conversation in

the middle and then the diffs on the

right. This can integrate with your

browser, so it can read network logs, it

can look at the DOM, you can run

terminals from here. Everything that you

love about the cursor editor, now

redesigned for working with agents. We'd

love your feedback if you try this out

and stay tuned for the next video.