The Cursor course

This is a hands-on course, not a reference. You’ll spend a week inside Cursor turning an inherited side project - budgetcli, a small self-hosted personal-finance API for tracking accounts, importing bank statements, and flagging overspend - into something you’d actually trust with your own money. Every chapter takes a problem you’ll really hit (auto-retrieval pins the wrong files on a big repo, the agent reintroduces the same money bug, a refactor is worth doing but not one-at-a-time) and shows the exact Cursor move that fixes it. budgetcli is the course’s running case study; this site does not ship a starter repository, so use the transcripts as guided exercises against a TypeScript repo you own or supply a matching starter project before following commands literally.

This course is editor-first. Cursor is a GUI-first fork of VS Code, built by Anysphere and shipped as its own desktop app - so the first-class surface here is the editor you already know, with the AI bolted onto it. That’s a deliberate inversion of the Codex and Claude Code courses, which start at the terminal: here the editor is the spine and the CLI is a chapter near the end, not the other way round. The arc runs from your first in-editor edit out to headless and CI - and by the time it gets there, the review habit you build in the first hour is the part that hasn’t changed.

If you want the spec-level “what is this primitive” view, that’s Foundations. This course is the other half: the muscle memory. Read it start to finish to build up from zero, or drop into any chapter when a specific problem is in front of you.

Before you start

Cursor installed (download from cursor.com)
A Cursor account (free tier works for most of the course)
Basic TypeScript familiarity
Git fundamentals
VS Code experience helpful (Cursor is a fork)
A TypeScript repository to use as the exercise workspace, or a budgetcli starter repository supplied by your course host
jq and a disposable CI/VM environment for the later CLI and Cloud Agent chapters
Estimated time: 4-5 hours for the full course

The curriculum

Eleven chapters, in reading order. Each is a self-contained chapter that carries the budgetcli project one stretch further - start at the top, or pick the problem in front of you.

1 · Getting started Your first hour: install Cursor, migrate your VS Code setup, meet the Agent sidebar and Tab, watch one turn of the read-propose-review loop, and ship a first reviewed fix to the inherited repo.

2 · The daily edit loop The in-editor muscle that only exists because Cursor is an editor - Tab vs the Agent sidebar, inline edit with Cmd/Ctrl+K, the @-attaches / -runs split, accepting and rejecting diffs, checkpoints and restore, worn into your hands on real edits.

3 · Modes Switch posture deliberately - Ask for read-only Q&A, Agent for execution, and custom Plan or Debug postures when the task needs them. Use the picker and current shortcut; the skill is picking the right one before you start.

4 · Context Steer what the agent sees - @-tag files, folders, and @Docs - and learn when to lean on Cursor 2.0's self-gathering retrieval and when to hand-pin context instead, on a large inherited repo where auto-retrieval guesses wrong.

5 · Models Spend where it pays. Use the per-chat picker, let Auto route everyday work, reach for a stronger model only when it earns it, and check plan-dependent billing before using MAX Mode or a long-context pattern repeatedly.

6 · Rules Stop Cursor reintroducing the same bugs by writing the project's standing facts down once. The four rule layers, the .mdc frontmatter and rule types, AGENTS.md as the portable plain-markdown path Cursor reads natively, the legacy .cursorrules file, and the 'globbed rule only attaches when the file enters context' sharp edge.

7 · Permissions, auto-run & the sandbox Set the blast radius deliberately. Pick an auto-run mode, lean on the Agent Sandbox as the load-bearing control, and treat allow/deny rules as policy controls rather than guarantees.

8 · Parallel & remote agents Some work is worth doing but not one agent at a time. Fan a single prompt out to parallel agents, each walled off in its own git worktree, then review the competing results and merge the one that wins - then meet the delegated and remote flavours and when each fits.

9 · Extending: MCP, skills, commands & hooks Give the agent reach and structure - MCP servers to query systems it can't see, Agent Skills and custom slash commands to package the procedures you keep retyping - then a deterministic gate: Hooks that enforce policy whether or not the model cooperates.

10 · The CLI, headless & CI Take Cursor out of the editor. Install the CLI, drive it interactively or headless with -p and explicit output formats, authenticate with CURSOR_API_KEY, wire a read-only budgetcli check into CI, spawn Cloud Agents over REST, and let Bugbot review pull requests.

11 · Daily workflow You've learned every move Cursor makes on budgetcli. This last chapter isn't a new primitive - it's wearing them so lightly you stop reaching for them on purpose: choose the right posture, use Auto deliberately, pick the right surface before you type, and look back across the editor-first to headless arc.

How to read it

Each chapter carries one running project - you’ll follow budgetcli across a week of real work - and the chapters build on each other: each one picks up a problem the last one left you with, adds a move to your repertoire, and hands off to the next. The order is deliberately editor-first: you start in the GUI where Cursor’s whole pitch lives, and only walk out to the terminal and CI once the in-editor habits are reflex.

So you get the most out of a chapter by reading it in order. But each one still stands on its own if you drop in from a search with one specific problem in front of you - you’ll just miss the running story.

What you won’t find is a fixed template stamped onto every chapter. Some need a long worked transcript, some a single setting and a warning, some a digression into why Cursor behaves the way it does. The shape follows the content, the way a good book varies its chapters.