Cursor AI tutorial for beginners

if you're anything like me you've been down the cursor AI Rabbit Hole the idea of taking an idea and turning it into a

code in a few minutes is just so amazing but before we get ahead of ourselves I think it's really important to uh know the best practices when using cursor Ai

and I found this guy that you've probably never heard of he's got like a couple thousand followers on Twitter and the way he explains best practices

around using cursor AI really clicked for me so I I brought them on uh the Pod hope you enjoy uh and I think that it

this video is going to save you hours and hours of time uh because it's going to give you the foundations of how to actually build something that's going to

work and uh that's what we're that's what we're about here taking ideas and making them work so enjoy

[Music] all right so I had a question about

cursor and there's a few people I call when I have a question about cursor but one of my main people is my man Mike and I had a simple question I said how could

you get the best results from cursor AI we're all playing with cursor uh we're stumbling we're following we're falling um and my man Mike is going to teach us

in this video how to get the best results um and this man this man knows so thank you for coming on well again thank you for uh the opportunity uh super excited to share some of my

findings and I I guess we can uh get straight to it that's what we do we get straight to it you know like that's that's what this channel is about yeah I love it no long intro and we're just

getting straight to it so yeah I think um so I've been for for context I'm a a front developer um in my uh current place of employment I do full full stack

and I've been playing with cursor for the last couple weeks mainly because I wasn't really a big fan of like the other co-pilots that were available like GitHub co-pilot so decided to give

cursor a shot and I think a lot of people are starting to enjoy it but I I realized there are a couple things that I think if people made these tweaks at least I believe the output would be different and this is my personal

experience so the first thing I would really say is planning um I don't think it makes sense to just jump on cursor go on the composer and just start asking it

to build stuff I really do think even if you're using AI you're not a developer you should have that developer mindset where you plan on what you're going to

build what it kind of looks like I would even go as far as having some sketches that you can go on paint or figma or even handwritten and really have like some sort of picture in mind reason

being is when whenever you're prompting these AI models you want to give it as much context as possible you you don't want to assume it's smart and you don't want to make the AI the boss you're the

boss the AI is the co-pilot right so the biggest thing I would say is is planning and um I don't see enough people planning I see people just jumping on composer and telling you to make stuff

and I think your outputs would be really really great if you did a lot if you did planning before you go to cursor so this step I call the measure twice cut

once strategy so you measure twice um you you know I I I think yeah figma is where you want to start

right yeah 100% like somewhere where you can draw like if you don't have figma it's too difficult for you paint whatever it is just like you know even if you're not a developer start to think

and act like one you know what I mean like half the game is acting like one and do you have any anything you can share of planning documents or something like that that people can have a look at

so they get a sense around okay I think I understand what do I actually do and this is pretty funny my uh like very first I would say

product that uh popped off I don't know if I have it in my Apple notes but I

literally just drew on my iPad let me see if I can pull it up here just sketches and there are also AI platforms that you can use let me see if I could

pull it up here can you see my screen oh baby do I see your screen yeah so this is like something simple and this was before we even had cursor this was just

Chad gbt um and I think I was doing some client work I think this is for client work where I literally just drew this

out and this is like some portfolio page for like a uh web3 client of mine and I took this screenshot uploaded to chat gbt and we didn't even have like code or

anything like that but basically we didn't have Claud or anything like that but basically I just asked it um what should my how should I plan this out what should my structure be I wanted I

wanted it to look like this what should I do and I already know what I was going to do but this was me sort of like building uh this was me asking my

assistant my co-pilot for some advice um oftentimes in uh the programming world you you call this rubber ducking where you're talking to a fictional duck that doesn't exist but basically explaining

what you're thinking and in in in doing that you kind of start to have realizations and maybe this isn't the smart way of doing things maybe this is a great way of doing things and I think

with AI you can do uh that a lot better and not only that I know I'm sure people are familiar with uh v0 but I highly highly suggest that at least if you're

not not going to plan with like Figo and stuff like that at least start with v0 reason being is I I I find it it really helps visualizing what your potential

app MVP whatever it is will look like and vzer is great for that so for example let's say shh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that

could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated

Concepts from entrepreneurs who've built hundred million plus businesses I've compil them into one simple

database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but the main thing is most of these ideas

don't need a single investor some cost nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet the idea bank is your startup shortcut cut just click below to

get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for

you uh I want to build a clean looking Marketplace website for bicycle sellers I don't know something

random right and what's great with vzer um is that you can just keep going and going and I I truly believe this is where you start and and once you have a sense of okay this is what I kind of

want to build then you take this over to cursor then you take this over to clot or whatever AI model you want to use I think people are jumping straight to claw or or to cursor and sure you can

get results but I think VZ or maybe drawing it out is where you start and what I love about VZ is um because it's

built using shaten UI which is a UI uh Library you can really get nice looking uh UI and this is just one one prompt if

I like I could ask it for maybe a better gradient maybe more rounded edges maybe a testimonial section it even gave me a footer and all I would do is literally

just copy this code and take it over to cursor and now cursor has something to build on top of which I truly believe is where it shines

best so go back to that wireframe that you had before right here I feel like and correct me if I'm wrong like it almost makes sense even before you get

into vzer to draw it out yeah and you know what we can even test this out why don't I drag and drop this into vzero this is what I'm talking about the

live cooking starts this wasn't even planned so drop the screenshot um I want to build a web3

portfolio uh I spell portfolio on portfolio website refer to the wire frame web 3 do you want to include web

three oh did I not say oh I meant miss the three please and thank you and one thing I don't know if this actually helps but I'm nice to my Ai and I seem to be getting great

results so this is live I didn't plan this I didn't even know I had these screenshots and so it's cooking okay got the

search Yep this is what I live for so we went from this screenshot this drawing on my iPad to this and now what's cool

about this is I can start getting specific and saying move the search bar to the right um and then what if I do that it's going to move the search here so this is

just a great place to start and I think a lot of people uh would benefit spending a good chunk of time here uh just because as a developer especially

when I'm working on like software that people will actually use not just like a side project you have to spend a lot of time planning making sure you know what it looks like because whenever you start

coding that's not the time where you should be thinking about what you should do you should already know what you should do and then just start writing code from there so I really do believe people would benefit massively draw

something up whether it be figma your iPad pencil paper whatever it is take a picture of that place it over at V Z and start prompting with v0 like you can go

far like I would say minimum you should go at least 10 to 15 prompts with v0 and get what you want to build as close as possible to what you've envisioned and it's very possible like v0 is that good

so that's at least where I would start in the beginning no cursor so far step one of being good at cursor don't go on cursor exactly exactly like that's why I have you

you're here for the hot takes all right what what else what else you got yeah so that's that's number one so planning like spend as much time planning daydreaming visualizing drawing vzer is

a great friend and I like the name vzer because it literally is your version zero and then SEC second is I know the devs might know this but a lot of people are getting to cursor don't know this

there's a site called cursor. directory

and it's a pretty sick site and basically what cursor. directory is

there are these prompts that you can copy and paste and place in your cursor codebase and essentially what this does is this is like the um like this is the

initial prompted will read before you even get to prompted anything so let's say I'm building an app that uses nextjs right I can go here and search

nextjs click that here and then I see that there's six different uh prompts I can copy so if I click on this one right here this is what you would copy paste to cursor it says you are an expert in

typescript nodejs nextjs app rer react shat CN UI radics UI and tailwind and then there's just a bunch of best practices that cursor should follow for nextjs and the reason why this is

important is because sometimes the models have a tendency to pull outdated information um it's not that it's wrong but it's just outdated so what this does

is you are setting up your cursor codebase for success and all you literally do is you go to this site you copy this uh text and they even have an

instruction I believe it's uh in about yeah so if you go about it tells you copy and add do cursor rules file in the

root of your project so I can even show a live example of this just to tie the picture home actually we'll do this for one of

my project for my portfolio set right now so let me know okay you can see that right so this is my portfolio site simple nextjs codebase the way this

would work is I would go on cursor and I would create a new file in the root folder and it would be called cursor rules that's it right cursor rules and

then what I do is I search what technologies my uh the what technologies I'm using to build whatever I'm building I'm using nextjs I'm I'm kind of a

nextjs fanboy so I'll go to nextjs I'll read through these this one seems to be the closest to what I'm building with and if I want I can always tweak it so I

copy that and then I paste that here and all I do is save and I'm good to go so now every time I prompt cursor I either

bring the uh composer view or the side AI chat every time I prompt it it's going to know what my codebase is based

on because of thist cursor rules file so highly highly suggest again it's cursor.

directory all you have to do is just find what technology you're building with if it's python you go you go to python copy it and then create a cursor

rules file paste it in there and I've literally seen Night and Day Results just by this simple uh implementation so highly suggest people do this I mean it

makes sense right it's like why wouldn't you go use this 100% And I I think it just takes 30 seconds of work and here's what's cool let's say you're using u a

set of technologies that um are not listed here what you can do is you can copy a couple of these go to Claude or gbt or whatever and be like I'm actually using these Technologies can you write

something similar following this flow for these technology copy paste W that works yep so we can we can let's why don't we again let's do live

example so let's say I'm going to copy this I'm going to say I'm building an

application or let me say a web application using uh react and

python python I want to write a nice prompt for

my AI similar to the one below please be just as concise right and I don't even spell things properly but let's see and then

I'll paste that um and then let's hit enter so it says here is so here it is you're an expert in react python scalable up applications key principles right

concise you literally got the same thing dependencies react 18 Python and it even got the versions right too react 18 typescript react router axios fetch aper

Implement code splitting lazy loading and react so your SES load yeah this is great so even if you don't have an En cursor directory copy one or two

examples um prompted the way I just prompted and if there's something maybe you want to use react 17 or 16 for some reason I don't know why or you want to use JavaScript you know tell it you know

um I actually want to use JavaScript not typescript and then you can manually edit that yourself or I can

just be lazy tell it to do that and then look react JavaScript see right here it mentions it react JavaScript use functional

components so crazy right so again this is before we haven't even started using uh cursor to write any code so highly suggest that

you implement cursor directory um because it just makes your prompts on cursor the results at least you get from cursor are much much better yeah I mean both those things Nob

brainer Nob brainer and and and I think they're easy to do right the planning is fun because you're in your creative process and cursor directory literally

takes 30 seconds the planning is fun I will say I I I'm one of those people that I just need to like get into it you know and I think a lot of people are like that but I have to it sounds like I

need to stop myself and just sort of take a breather start writing it down use use you know a figma or something like that that um the cursor directory

to me is like quite literally thank you uh for just saving me time no problem yeah and I think to like to your point I'm that type of person too like

well where even to this day I just like jumping into the coding because I I do enjoy writing code uh but I will say two things first you save yourself a lot of

headache and I think that one PE that people who might not be developers who are getting into building stuff using AI I really think one thing that people

need to start to embrace is the pain because there's a lot of pain when it comes to just building things in general especially um now with like these tools there will be a lot of times where you'll get stuck and you won't know what

to do and then you'll flipflop and then maybe you want to go this direction or that direction and this is coming from personal experience it just saves so much time even if it's maybe not the coolest way of starting it just saves so

much time planning and I think you you set up your uh AI assistant your co-pilot for Success when you already have a lot of the information ready right um I don't think that models are

at a point where it's good enough to just start from scratch we'll get there eventually uh but if you're trying to build something that people actually use I really do think you should really have

that developer mind where you know you might not be doing things you like but you're starting off with planning and then those plans creating some mockups setting up your cursor directory and

then going about uh programming but from like a side project perspective have fun have as much fun as you want go oneshotting you know break stuff like that that's the that's you know it's a learning process in it of itself you

learn a lot doing that uh but when you want to build something and you're and it's you know something of importance I definitely think the planning should

happen at least try That's My Hope cool what do you mean by tagging docs yeah so um very important when you're building

something um to know what technologies You're Building you might not need to know how exactly they work but it's super important to um know um the Technologies You're Building because

every technology you're using to build has documentation so for example um a lot of people whether they know it or not are using nextjs so if I go to nextjs

dorg um and then I click on right I essentially have the documentation to everything next to you is how it works um how things are what

like you know how routing Works Pages Works layouts and all this stuff and one thing I would suggest even if you're non-technical person I would highly suggest maybe just taking a breeze at things just take a look at stuff if

something doesn't make sense take a screenshot give it to I tell it to explain to you S5 but what I mean by tagging docs is let's go to curs here

something cool that you can do on composer is I can hit add and then I you see this docs right here I can click

docs and then I can click add doc add new Doc and then I can literally copy let me just make sure I'm getting this URL I could paste it

here and I'll call this nextjs docs and then it should save so now inside my cursor I have access to the

nextjs docs and the reason why this is important is because again a lot of these models you know scrape the internet and all that stuff in a specific time maybe some of that information is outdated maybe it's not

best practices right any technology you're using the docks are usually the best source of Truth so now I have

access to the docs and I can say um how can I build a simple page that says

hello world I hit enter so now it's going to take in notice how it's reading the getting started page Dynamic modules building your application so I've

literally given cursor um the latest and greatest information when when it comes to setting up uh an xjs application so

not only do I get the code set up but I also get commands on how to run it and I think one thing that people should do even if you're not a developer again act like it until you become one I would

highly suggest like going to whatever Pages it mentioned so it said here getting started so let's see if it's slash getting

started I don't know if this is the page oh it's not the page maybe it's here right here getting started okay can't find the page but you

get my drift you get my drift I really think um like as people are building they should use the building moment as a learning uh moment and that's

essentially what I mean by tagging docs so let's say another technology that people might use for their databases superbase so I'll just search superbase

docs and then I'll just copy this right here and then let me uh create a new composer view I'll just add

docs oh pre-populated some dogs here I'll add a new one paste the link hit enter and then I'll name this super base

docks and then hit confirm and now I have access to literally all this information here I don't really have to read through this I can just ask composer this and what this does is

every time I have an issue um I can tag these docs and cursor can debug the issues I'm having with the most upto-date information right so it just makes your

life way more easy right because we're all going to run into these bugs and you know when you see that CA of red you want to get out of there as quick as

possible so yeah this seems like aot makes a lot of sense also it's it sounds like it's really helpful for like if you're a beginner a beginner cursor user or

beginner developer call them that learning about all these different Frameworks and platforms like for example superbase or

nextjs like I think your your recommendation around go and just read all these doc doents is just going to get you up to speed so that you kind of speak the language and you understand

the ecosystem right exactly and and and that's half like that's half the battle really is just knowing what these words mean and I think with AI like you can expedite that process right so if you

know the Technologies You're Building you're building with and you have access to the docs and your AI has access to the docks it like every time you get into an issue it's easy for the AI to

solve it and in solving it you start to understand how things work right I think this is one of those things where if people are used to learning then doing it's going to be a tough time because

it's one of those things you're going to do it's going to break and then you're going to do again it's going to break and then the when it works you realize oh this is how it works you just learned

something new right and and I think so far the first three points have really just been preparing cursor with all the information and I I think context is key

with all these AI models a lot of people think AI is just magic where it just knows stuff no it just has a lot of context already pre-built in so what you and I are doing um is just giving it as

much context as possible with what we're building with what we're doing so it's sort of aligned with us right it it's almost like hiring a new employee and this is the onboarding

phase cool quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people

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boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out

highly recommend boring marketing.com what do you mean by asking other AI yeah so there will be times that cursor gets stuck and I've experienced this where I

have a simple bug the fix is is pretty simple like I see it I know how to fix it but I'm trying to understand like how would I go about doing this if I was

just using Ai and the easiest thing I've realized and a lot of people um have said that I'm wrong on this but what I realized is whenever cursor is stuck

even though I'm using CLA within cursor I realize when I copy that same issue that same bug and I paste it over to Claude even though it might be using the

same model it actually like it'll be act it'll be able to actually solve it now I'm not a I don't understand how AI models really work but I've kind of based on my own workflow realized like

if it's continuously getting stuck that's probably the time to consult another AI model maybe go to Claud maybe go to vzer maybe go to even Chad gbt

whatever it is but what I've realized recently works even better is giving whatever AI model you're going to the bug that you that you experienced the solutions that it tried to give in

didn't work because when you do that you're essentially is telling it hey um this is the issue these are the solutions it tried it failed you need to do something new and when I started

doing that the results were much much higher again context is king So instead of just copy pasting the bug and giving it to the next AI model it will probably

give you the same solution again but what you do is you give it the solutions it tried that it failed even give it the output you're getting and what you're expecting and I've seen time and time

every time I do that the result are just much much better so if you're stuck with cursor take the bug copy paste the code that's giving you an issue the red squiggly lines copy paste the potential

uh fixes that he gave but failed give that all to another AI model the results on Next Level so that's what I mean by asking other AI or other

assistants cool and you even said chachy BT when all fails yeah the bottom yeah the bottom of your list you know it's funny just how things have Chang changed

like over the last few weeks even it is like I pay for cursor v0 Claude I don't pay for Chad gbt and I I don't think I

ever will uh truth I think Claude like Claude is great for like everyday task plus programming cursor is C cursor and

vzer is just great for starting in UI components Chad gvt just seems you know so me mid basically but who knows maybe the next model sweeps us

totally maybe who knows who knows okay cool what else uh what else do you want to talk about yeah so um some things that cursor is great at that I highly

recommend or AI in general is great at is number one let's say um and this is more for developers let's say you have some code already written and you want to open source it or you want to explain

it to somebody else asking AI models to explain what's already written in 10 out of 10 probably the best thing I think as a developer the most annoying thing is

writing documentation and AI is great at that but I I'm I'm assuming most people who are watching this are not developers so to the next Point explaining code and

teaching code so let's give a live example here I have um my portfolio site here let's go

on maybe the projects card so this is just some simp simple code um and basically what this code does is just to give you a visual

representation is on my portfolio you see these project cards and you see like this hover like when you hover that follow nice touch I appreciate that

thank you I pride myself in good design that's what this component does right so um I actually have done this already I have some comments already

written here that I use AI to write but let's say I go here and then I I'll do command shift

L explain this code to me like a beginner I want to know the flow logic

and overall how things work please and thank you so copy this component and now this

is what's going to do so okay certainly I'd happily explain this code component setup this code defines a react component called blog card it is a client component indicated by use client

at the top so if I go to the top okay so use client this is a client component which means it uses react Hooks and handles client side interactions so let's say this doesn't make sense to me

I'll copy this over and then ask it again right and it says the components except three props State and refs Mouse movement Handler outer container so it literally breaks things down to you and

then what I would do is when you read something that doesn't make sense um I can literally copy this and be like what does this mean and then hit that use

client directive when you use client at the top of the file of next Chase it is telling next CH that the component should be rendered on the client side in the browser rather than on the server

okay so when I add use client this file is being rendered or basically in a very simple ter it's being cooked on the browser versus on the server so the more

you do this I know first glance this might seem difficult but you know it's like a snowball effect the more you do this the more you learn these little things you start to catch and understand

patterns and truthfully speaking I know a lot of devs will hate me for this but if you understand the patterns enough and we assume the models will continue to grow um in the way that they're

growing which is not linear but exponential like we can get to the point I don't I'm not saying we're there yet I I still think the El have a way to go but we can get to a point if someone

invest time now that they can get really good at building stuff that works um and that's what I mean by I

think um cursor or any model Claude especially they are really great at explaining code and like teaching

Concepts so highly recommend as as people are building um to just ask it to explain what did you do here what do you mean by this how does this work um is

there any other way to do this and I really think it would benefit people especially as they go on as the models get better to know these things now totally it sounds like it might take you

a little bit longer but in the in in the short term but in the long term you'll be more self-sustaining you'll understand more you'll be able to build quicker you'll understand the

landscape more yeah and I think that's kind of where like my viewpoint is like I see a lot of like there are a lot of companies for example building like agents a lot

of startups doing this that and the third and then there's a part of me that's like all that we're seeing right now is just the early version of stuff right even cursor I I don't doubt cursor

if they keep going this trajectory one two years from now is going to be a whole different monster so it's in my opinion that anyone who is watching this

or or in the space right now that they invest time in learning this stuff not because they'll make meaningful change now but when the models get really really good maybe in the next 6 months a

year two years you have been well prepared and you you're just the timing of things will be perfect right so I know there's a lot of people like oh there's no point in being a developer

now like being a developer is done I I think in fact the best time is now because not only will you be able to know how to code but you have these models that will probably at some point code better than you and it will at

least explain Concepts to you it's unreal like I've learned like I do freelancing on side and I've learned so much of new technologies that if I

didn't have these tools would have taken me time like I'm mostly a web dev mobile Dev picked it up in literally a week in a week now does it help that I know how

to program and stuff yes but what would have taken me some time has literally taken me a week and not only did I learn how to build but I built while I learned

and I think a lot of people if they just stick to the pain for the next couple months when these new models come I think you'll be in a great

position I love it anything else you uh want to add yeah um I I I would say adding comments to code kind of showed that here right if you write some code

and you want to know how this works you can literally ask it um add comments to my code I already have them here so I won't show that and the last thing I would say is duplicating what already

exists so let's say um and I can't think of an example so hopefully people can catch the theory I'm about to share but let's

say you have um some sort of functionality on one page that um does something and it does it really really

well and you have to do something similar on another page but with a Twist what I've seen helps is you copy that code or you copy that functionality and

you say this works for this page can we do the same thing for this page but and then explain exactly what you want done and the more I I talk about these things

I realize it's just the more context you give your AI models the better um answers they will give you so I noticed that if you already U have existing functionality and you want to do

something different but it's very similar um referencing that existing functionality really really helps and I guess one tip I would have and I know we

talked about this and I'm sure um cursor and all these AI platforms will probably do this is if you can have like a template that already has and I know replate is doing this with their latest

announcement if you have a template that already um has a lot of boiler PL code like let's say has a landing page has authentication like Google Au and all

that set up for you uh maybe a database integration a dashboard if you can have that and build on on top of that that to me I think is the is the smartest way of

doing things for example I can give a simple example here um if I open my cursor here so this is my

starter kit and basically what I realize is especially when I'm doing freelance work or side projects is I sort of do the same thing and again and again I

need a landing page I need uh payments with stripe I need a a dat database I need authentication where people should be able to log in with um Google or or

email or whatever it is or two- Factor authentication and I kept building the same thing again and again so what I did was I built one based on the different

projects uh I've done put it together so every time I as a developer forget I as a developer in building something I always start with my starter kit and

it's to my understanding that I know quote me on this cursor and all these AI models will do this is they will start providing people with templates that they can build off of so one thing I would highly suggest I have my own it's

free you don't have to pay for it I know some people charge you can use my template or you can find a template you can liter go on GitHub and be like nextjs starter template or react starter

template find one that a lot of people are raving about and download that code and use it in your cursor I think that

is probably the best place for people to start uh when it comes to developing if they're trying to build something serious right because authentication is hard I'm not going to lie setting up

your DP from scratch is hard but if you find these templates and there's a lot of them out there and you build on top of that you're cooking dude this is everything I wanted

and more this is like the de facto how to get the most out of cursor video and I appreciate you sharing that free template too with everyone highly

recommend people check out uh Mike's YouTube channel and and just his content he's thrown out there it's dope and

uh and thank you for your time um there we we did another video for people uh with a starter template around we created um basically a social media app

in in like 90 minutes so you can if people are interested you can you can check out that video I I'll link it uh in the description we can use the comment sections on YouTube as just like

people who are building and Mike maybe you can I'll I'll be in there uh Mike maybe you jump in here comment a little bit um and uh and let's all build some

cool stuff yeah um again Greg thank you so much for your time I'm really really appreciate it um don't take it for granted and if anybody has any questions you can leave them in the comments I

will 100% reply um I don't want to say all of them cuz you get a lot of comments to as many of them as I can um and just like the AI models add as much context as possible please um and yeah

again thank you so much uh for this time I really appreciate it cool yeah and if if people if people like this and found it fun and interesting um maybe we'll do it again so please let us know yep let

me know and maybe I'll be back love it thanks a lot man all right bye

[Music] baby