6 Months with Cursor: 5 Tips to 10x Your Dev Workflow

Hey, this is Denis. This newsletter some time ago was called Syntha AI and I wrote about Generative AI. I decided to continue writing it from my name.

It will be mostly focused on Gen AI for coding. Every week I’ll send some practical findings and tips in coding with AI using tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini, OpenAI Codex, etc.

If you have any suggestions, just reply to this email. Let’s begin.

It's been 6+ months since I've started using Cursor as my main IDE. Here are 5 tips that will make you 10x developer.

1. Proper files in the context are KEY to good results. It's better to tag files yourself than expect agent to read them. Yes, agent has tool to read files, but it is very limited if not using MAX model.

If you see it using read_file tool, stop, return to your request and add file to the context.

2. Don't try to one-shot big features or whole products. Instead, split them into smaller tasks and solve one task at a time. It will save you from most of hallucinations and bad results.

3. Select model depending on the task complexity and creativity you need. Prefer Sonnet 4 when you need creativity ("improve the copy on the whole landing page and make it insanely beautiful") and Sonnet 3.5 in case you need it to just follow your instructions. Use Gemini 2.5 if Sonnet models didn't work. Try o4-mini in case other models haven't fixed the issue.

4. Update your cursor rules every time it makes a mistake because of lack of knowledge. Just some examples:

- Cursor used incorrect colours => add palette description

- Cursor created a new file instead of using existing code => describe it in rules

- Cursor incorrectly understood your DB structure => add file with description in rules.

5. Turn on this setting: Include Project Structure. Cursor will now know where the files are.

— Denis