Tim Anderson examines the new visual web designer in Cursor, an AI-powered editor based on VS Code, exploring its technical features and developer reactions to bugs and UI changes.

AI-Driven Cursor Editor Adds Visual Designer Amid Developer Frustrations

Cursor, an AI-assisted code editor forked from Visual Studio Code, continues to evolve rapidly. Version 2.2, released in 2025, introduces a visual web designer as part of ongoing efforts to make coding more accessible and productive for developers working with AI tools.

Key Features

  • Visual Web Designer: Built into the browser sidebar, allowing developers to move, realign, size, color, and style page elements using sliders and a visual interface. Changes are applied via AI agents, enabling hot reload and instant feedback in the editor.
  • Debug Mode: Developers describe issues to an AI agent, which then injects logging into the code to verify the likely cause before proposing fixes.
  • Model Integration: Cursor supports multiple large language models (LLMs), including its own, OpenAI’s, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s, providing flexibility in AI-powered coding assistance.

Developer Feedback

While the visual designer and debug mode provide new opportunities for streamlining web app design and troubleshooting, many developers have pointed out significant issues:

  • Bugs and Instability: Reports of chat management problems, navigation glitches, model switching confusion, and integrity issues when using rapid feature updates.
  • Ever-Changing UI: Frequent interface changes force users to reconfigure the editor, disrupting workflows and causing frustration.
  • Opaque and High Costs: Usage pricing is based on credits and pay-as-you-go models, with costs varying by chosen AI model and operation complexity. Third-party model usage can be more expensive than direct API access, leaving cost management as a concern.
  • AI Overhead: The reliance on AI agents for seemingly simple changes raises questions about efficiency and affordability, with some users preferring CLI-based alternatives.

Team Insights

Ryo Lu, Cursor’s head of design, explained that at Cursor the distinctions between product managers, designers, and engineers are minimal, resulting in a unique product development culture. The absence of a formal roadmap leads to fast-paced updates, which while innovative, may also introduce stability concerns according to community feedback on Reddit and the Cursor forums.

Summary

Anysphere’s Cursor AI editor brings new AI-powered features for web design and debugging, but accompanying bugs, cost issues, and frequent UI revisions have divided developer opinion. The rapid pace of change is both a strength and a challenge as the team works to balance innovation with reliability and usability.

This post appeared first on “DevClass”. Read the entire article here