cursor turning into codex gave me an excuse to build my own version
+ native mac app built in swift
+ one click md/skills injection
+ simple theming system
+ one click push to git
it's now fully using itself to build itself
PersonalSoftware™
my cursor experience has declined since a couple of weeks or a month ago.
1. it first starts to consume a lot of power,
2. then it starts to reload the editor and plugins every couple of minutes,
3. it also starts to show a weird white bar at the left sidebar.
#2 is particularly annoying, because every reload resets the state of the left sidebar (the github PR view). i then need to manually click them to unfold.
in the last 12 hour activity monitor screenshot, this is already me using iterm2 for most of the time.
in fact i only opened cursor for a few hours during the period. coz nowadays i would only need it for code review and quick chats with pieces of code. earlier this week, i migrated from zed + cursor back to nvim + cursor. during that time, i actually made (with ai) the nvim experience so good that i don’t even need to switch out that often. i think it’s probably a good time to just use nvim.
this morning i’ve also tried the same plugin setup in vscode. it’s pretty good compared to cursor. especially their ai chat panel. every coding agent is treated as a first-class citizen, contrasting with cursor, they prioritize the cursor experience, so any third-party agents don’t even have a good UI presence.
i also think the UX of cursor is getting worse. just a few examples:
- the top-right switches are getting better than a couple of months ago, but still confusing
- the chat panel “auto” switch is so redundant. to switch from auto to a specific model, you need to do 3 clicks. what’s wrong with a normal dropdown list?
i know engineering tools are hard. i think they did really well last year, so i have high hopes for the team. plus i have a friend there, so i really want to support them. but for now, i had to step away for a bit for the sake of my own productivity.
Personal update:
I’m stoked to share that I recently joined @opensea as Staff Engineer.
I’ve spent the last 5 years in crypto because digital ownership is inevitable.
NFT use cases will continue to expand, and OpenSea is uniquely positioned to help shape what comes next onchain.
Time to build.
gm
Friday was my last day at @MagicEden.
The thesis re: digital ownership and sovereignty hasn’t changed.
I’m staying in crypto because the job's not finished.
More soon.
I’m hiring several designers on X to help connect humanity.
Who are the best designers or design engineers you know? I’d love to chat.
Must embrace AI tooling and code. If you live in Figma mocks all day, not a good fit.
product idea:
a ui or plugin for port management and one click start and stop for any project directory.
running the dev and checking claude's work is still the hardest part of vibe coding.