Cursor AI Done Right: Lessons from Building Multiple MVPs

Cursor is really dumb if not given enough context about your project. Here what you can do to improve your Cursor workflow

1. Brainstorm first, code second

Claude/o1 are your best friends here. You should create a whole document containing every single detail of your project.

All this should be put into an instruction.md (name it however you want) so Cursor can index at any time.

Many ignore this step. I get it’s daunting to write a .cursorrules file but it will help tremendously.

This is a great repo I always recommend to get you started. Choose your stack and edit it to match your preferences: awesome-cursorrules

Get your core features, color palette and components from your instruction.md file you got.
Bonus tip is to use screenshots as reference from other landing pages just so v0 gets your idea.
Use component libraries I recommend shadcn since v0 works great with it. I also use MagicUI.

Remember, you don’t have to get it perfect with v0. You only need something good enough you can take and edit later in cursor.

Use chat for smaller tasks and for explaining code/commands. Use it to ask questions and navigate your project.
Use composer for writing the code, tag your instruction.md inside the composer always and tell him to update it as the project progresses.
Only ask composer to do one task at a time. Make it make the changes step by step, if you ask to it to edit multiple files it will hallucinate and you will lose control.
Always verify the code is clean before approving the change.
Save your claude credits for the composer and use gpt-4o-mini with chat.