11 Cursor AI Hacks to Code Smarter, Not Harder | Cursor Tip & Tricks

In this video, I'll explain some cursor AI hacks or tips and tricks that can make you a cursor AI power user. And trust me, knowing this will help you increase your productivity by several fold and also improve your overall coding workflow. So, let's quickly get started.

So, here I have opened up a project in cursor and it is up and running. But before I proceed further, I quickly want to take a second to introduce a new cool tool called as aqua voice. And throughout this video, I won't be typing any prompt manually, but instead I'll be speaking them and let a AI detection software fill it for me.

So, there are some cool features in this one. And the tool name is Aqua Voice, and it is available for both Windows and Mac OS. So, you can hit the first link in the description below and download Aqua Voice.

And once you download and install it, you can start using it right away. And let me show you it in action. So, I have already installed Aqua in my computer.

And to access the same all I got to do is to keep pressing the function key and I can start speaking whatever content I want to and then as soon as I lift my finger off the function key whatever stuff that I spoke will automatically get filled whatever the cursor is. So here I have put this cursor in this chat interface or the chat box right here. And now I can keep pressing the function key and speak exactly what I want.

Can you please improve the styling of our landing page at the root? I want to incorporate even more elements to the page and add a contact form and a footer section as well. Also, make sure to include a toggle to switch between dark mode and light mode.

And as soon as I lift the finger, watch this. Aqua has automatically filled the entire stuff that I spoke into here. So, can you please improve the styling of our landing page at the root?

I want to incorporate even more elements to the page and add a contact form and a footer session as well. Also, make sure to include a toggle to switch between dark mode and light mode. Not even a single mistake.

So I can go ahead and click on send. And now one cool feature that I like a lot in Aqua is its deep context feature. So once you give the necessary permissions, Aqua will see everything on your screen and it can read all the content on the screen and give you a tiled experience and is prone to make less errors.

For example, let's say I'm using cursor here and if I go ahead and start speaking something via Aqua voice, Aqua will pretty much have can see everything on my screen. It can see this chat interface, the code, the files and all that. And along with my voice, it can also refer to all this content in here and the AI will get additional context to process my voice correctly.

And that way the AI or that say the dictation software is prone to make less errors. So that is also one cool feature that I found. And here cursor has made some changes.

I'll click on accept file and let's see. I'll refresh it. And seems like we have some error in here.

I can copy this error code from here and open cursor and I'll paste the same in here and I can say again I'll be using Aqua so I'll keep pressing the function key and I'll say I see the following error when I visit my website could you please fix it for me and I'll lift the finger and the same should get entered in here and I can click on send as easy as that okay so let's wait and by the way if you want to use Aqua all you got to do is to click the first link in the description below and head over to with aqua. com and you can download it for free for your Mac and Windows. And Aqua is generous enough to provide you with a free plan where you can actually go ahead and download and try the software and see how it works.

And now the cool thing about Aqua is that it works with pretty much all softwares and websites out there. So it doesn't matter which software you're using. If you want to use it in Google Docs, you can do that.

If you want to use it with cursor, bault, data button, winds surf or whatever be that platform, it works. So yeah, that's for Aqua. So definitely make sure to check out Aqua using the first link in the description below.

So the first hack is adding external and third party documentation to cursor. So often times when you're working on a project, you'll have to include a lot of these thirdparty functionalities to your website, right? For example, let's say you are adding authentication or database using superbase.

And now the AI won't know much about Superbase or its implementation or anything as such. So in this case, we can head over to Superbase, the official website of Superbase. And I'll go ahead and click on this doc option right here.

And here let's say I'm trying to implement authentication into my app. So I can select o. So here I have an extensive documentation about superbase o and different architectures getting started concept the flows that is social login, phone login, how to implement all of these and we have an extensive documentation right here.

And now if you were to manually copy paste all of these like it will take forever but you don't have to do that. So the thing that you could do instead is that you can head over to the root page. So here we have this page right here that says that is the authentication documentation page in superbase.

Okay. So come over to here and copy this one right here. And now you can head back to cursor and you can click on this settings icon and select the features option.

And if you scroll down you'll find a section that says docs. So you can click on this add new doc and put the URL in there. So whatever be the URL that you copied towards the documentation section you can paste it in here just like that and hit enter.

Now cursor will go ahead and okay so it says superbase and we have the prefix and the entry point. So all you got to do is to mention the entry point and you can click on confirm and now superbase will go ahead and get started with this page right here and go ahead and crawl all these pages. So all these pages that comes under this directory for example it will crawl the serverside renting password based email OTP.

social login then user management o hooks redirect URLs. So all you got to do is to provide this URL right here and cursor will go ahead and crawl all these content and index the same in here. So this right here is the one that we added right now and if I click on this button as you can see cursor has indexed about 568 pages within our oath that is superbase o documentation page and next step let's just say I want to implement authentication using superbase into the project that I'm working on cursor it is pretty simple first of all I'll close all of this and now I can open a new chat and I can simply say please add authentication using superbase into the object.

So here I have added the same using aqua voice. And now all you got to do is to put an address symbol. Okay?

Or maybe you can say refer to the and put an add rate symbol and you'll find a bunch of these option in here and select the option that says docs and you can see all these documentations that we have added. So in this case superbase. So I'll go ahead and select this one uh April 7th.

So I can add this one and all you got to do is to click on this send button. Now what happens is that cursor will go through all of these pages that cursor has indexed about superbase. So in this case it has referred to this firebase o superbase security o zero.

So it has referred to all these pages and now after referring to all these documentations pages it will start implementing the feature that you asked for. So cursor AI now knows how to implement how to properly implement superbase authentication by referring to all these documentations and in case if you run into any error you can go ahead and say tell the exact same thing. Please fix the error by referring to the superbase whatever docs and you should be good to go.

So in this way you can go ahead and add documentation pages of pretty much any websites out there. So for this one I'll reject and cancel it. Next up is the cursor rules option.

For example, let's say you want the AI within cursor to follow a specific naming convention or let's say you don't want any files to be over 100 lines of code or let's say you want to give any sort of rules or instructions to the AI that you want to follow or you want the AI to follow. You have options for that. Let me show you.

For example, you can go ahead and open the root of your project that you're working in here. And I'll go ahead and create a new folder called as dot cursor. Okay.

And inside of that, I'll create another folder called as rules. And now you can go ahead and create individual rules file. For example, I'll go ahead and let's say put basic.

mdc. So the extension have to be MDC. And now you can put any rule in here.

And now as you can see it says describe the task. This rule is helpful for and if you want you can tag a file by typing at the rate. For example, let's say I want the AI to talk to me like a pirate.

So whatever stuff that I ask to the AI, the AI should talk to me like a pirate. It is as easy as this. I go ahead and click on here and I'll use Aqua.

You should always talk to me like a pirate using their language and slang. So here we have filled it. You should always talk to me like a pirate using their language and slang.

And next up, I'll select the rule type as always. And next up, if I go ahead and ask any question to cursor, it will talk to me like a pirate. For example, I'll put it in the ask mode.

And let's just go ahead and ask, could you please explain more about serverside rendering? I used Aqua to uh type it. And I can click send.

And let's see. So there you go. It says, "Here Mitti, let me tell you about server side.

Yeah, land adjust ice patch. " And here we have the AI is using some icons and emojis and all that. And now all this is happening because we explicitly included a rule within cursor and we told it you should always talk to me like a pirate using their language and slang.

So that is the reason okay savvy the main difference be that SSR your users I mean you get the point right now if you want the AI to follow a specific naming convention whenever it creates a new file or let's say you don't want the AI to update any file okay other than one in the context you could go ahead and say when I ask you to add some features or edit something do not go ahead and edit and make changes to pretty much all files out there only edit files that are required and needed in that particular context So I added this rule right here and it says basically I want the AI to only make changes to the files that are required for that specific feature or functionality. Sometimes the AI will go ahead and sort of make edits to pretty much all the files even when they are not required. So by adding this in the rules file I can basically fix that.

So this is how the cursor rules files work and you can go ahead and add any number of rules and give additional instructions or rules to the AI to follow. So that's for cursor rules. Next up is the web search option within cursor.

So you can head over to settings in cursor. Click on features and if you scroll down you will find a new option called as where is it? Yeah verb search tool.

So if you enable this option this will allow chat in agent/ ask mode to search the web for information. So I'll go ahead and enable it and save the settings. And now if I go ahead and let's say ask something to the AI.

For example, I could go ahead and ask what is the latest version of Python. And maybe I could also say refer the internet and find the latest version. Okay.

And I can click on send. And let's see. So it says I'll search the web to find information about the latest version of Python.

And it is now asking me the permission to search do a web search for the same. So I can click on continue. And just because we enabled the web search option, now the AI or the AI agent within cursor can do a real-time web search and find all the relevant informations.

So as you can see it says the latest version of Python is Python 3. 13. 2 released on February 4, 2025.

So let me go ahead and search for it. Python latest uh version and I can hit enter and let's see. All right.

So there you go. All right. So download 3.

13. 2 and that is exactly what the A has told us. So if you feel like you want to use up-to-date information for any task, you can simply enable the real-time web search feature within cursor AI and let the AI agent within cursor search for things on the web.

So if you want to, you can go ahead and enable this web search tools option and it is currently in beta. Next up is the thinking mode within cursor. For example, if you go ahead and open cursor and if you click on this drop-own menu that says auto, you can go ahead and select whatever AI model that you want to use, right?

Pretty simple. For this one, let's keep it as cloud 3. 7.

But towards the top, you will find yet another option called as thinking. And if you enable this option, the AI will now go through a reasoning or thinking process before answering any question. Okay.

For example, I could go ahead and ask any question. What would be the best approach to implement authentication to our app. Okay.

And now I can click on send. Now the AI will go through a thinking process before coming to the final conclusion or generating the answer. So as you can see it thought for 2 seconds.

And now it says to recommend the best authentication approach for your app. I need to understand your current text stack and project structure first. Okay.

So it will make a huge difference especially when you're working on a huge project with huge context. So the AI will think and think about all the different stuff happening within your project and also find the best solution. it will reason itself what would be the best advantages, what are the disadvantages and give you a final answer.

So that is how the thinking process uh works and as you can see here it says thought for 2 seconds. The user is asking about implementing authentication in their app. Let me first explore the codebase to understand the current structure and technology stack in order to provide an appropriate authentication recommendation.

So in a similar fashion whenever you go ahead and ask the AI something and if you have this thinking mode enabled AI will go through a thinking process before answering you. Next up is MCP servers. So as you might already know cursor support MCP servers and you can go ahead and add MCP servers to increase the productivity and interact with any third party tools or services.

For example, let's say you want to add superbase MCP server to cursor. You can do that. For that first of all I'll head over to superbase.

com and I'll visit the documentation page and search for MCP. Okay, let's wait. Okay, here we have model context protocol.

So let's say I want to add the superbase MCP2 cursor. And by the way, if you don't know much about MCP and if you want to learn more about it, I have already posted a video explaining about MCP and how to add it to cursor and you can go ahead and watch that video by clicking the I button above or link in description. So I'll scroll down and all I got to do is to copy this particular part from here and create a dotcursor/mcp.

json file and paste it in there. So in this case I have already created a rules file. So I can simply go ahead and create a file called as mcp.

json. JSON. Okay, I'll put it as mcp.

json and oops, mcp. json. So, this writer is a rules file.

And now all I got to do is to copy and paste it in here. And next step, I need to grab my personal access token. And for that, I'll head back.

Okay, head over to Superbase settings. And I'll generate a new token and name it MCP cursor. Oops.

MCP cursor. and generate the token. And now I can copy the same and paste it in here just like that.

And that's it. Now our model context protocol should be live and I should be able to use it. Okay.

So I open the chat and I can say can you please list all the projects inside my superbase uh account? And now I'll click on the send button and let's see. Okay, so it has asked me the permission to list all the projects.

I'll click on run command. And now as you can see Superbase is listing all these projects that are currently active in my account. So if I open superbase and go to the dashboard and load it.

So these are all the projects that I have in my account and you can find the same in here. You get the point, right? you can go ahead and add a MCP server and let cursor interact with any thirdparty service providers or tools and do stuff for you.

So you can literally ask what you want to do and now cursor will do it on behalf of you. So that's for MCP servers. And next up now you have a notepads feature right within cursor.

So if you click on this button or option that says notepads and if you click on this create new notepad option you'll be able to create a notepad like this and you can go ahead and type and store whatever information that you want to just like that and now you can save this notepad and give it a name for example let's say some random notes and this way you can store notes about a particular project right within cursor so you don't have to use any other service or let's say node tools for this one so now that you have this notepads feature right within cursor you can go ahead and store whatever content particular to this project right here in the notepad section and anyone can refer to it maybe in the future you can to refer to the same and find all the changes or whatever stuff that you have documented so that is for notepads feature within cursor next up is the option to use pretty much any AI model that you want to use right within cursor so normally if you click on this drop-own menu right here you only have a limited number of models that you could use from Gemini clude and open air right so we have all these but if you want to let's say add additional AI models, you can do that. And for that, head over to cursor settings. Select this option that says models.

And here you can find a list of all these AI models that you could use. So all these models that are enabled are the ones that you see in this drop-down menu right here. For example, if you enable one of these, you can now find the same in this drop-down menu that is cursor fast.

And in a similar fashion, if you want to, let's say enable DeepS R1 or Geminina 2. 0 Flash, you can do it from here. Or let's say you want to add additional models, you could do that.

For that all you need to do is to first grab your open AI, Anthropic or Google API key, paste it in here and click on this add model option and configure your model. And this way you can use pretty much any AI model with cursor. You don't have to be limited with all these options only.

So if you feel like you want to use a different model, you can do that. Next up, let's just say you're working on a huge project with thousands of files and directories. The limited context size won't be sufficient for you.

In that case, you can head over to cursor settings and click on features. And if you scroll down, you will be able to find a new option that says large context. So it says when enabled, chat uses longer context windows, but this may use more fast request.

So if you want to, you can enable this option. So basically what happens is that the chat interface will now have a larger context window and for the same reason it can send and process large number of code. Obviously, it will use more fast request.

So you have to be careful about this option. But if you feel like for a certain task, you want a larger context window, you can go ahead and enable this option and do it that way. And lastly, if you want to be the first person to try out all these new features that are about to hit cursor AI, you have options for that as well.

So if you head over to settings and click on this option that says beta, you can find a drop-own menu called as update frequency. And if you put it to early access, you will be the first to get notified and get latest updates like beta updates from cursor AI. So you will be able to access all these features before anyone else.

So if you want to, you can go ahead and click on this early access option and get all these updates. And again, this early access may not be stable for production work. But if you have a different installation and if you want to try out all these cool new features that has not made it to the public release yet, you can go ahead and put it in the early access section and access all these beta version or let's say early updates to cursor AI.

So, these are some hidden cursor AI tips and tricks that you must be aware of if you want to improve your coding workflow and increase your productivity. And again, definitely make sure to check out Aqua Voice using the first link in the description below. So, you no longer have to type anything.

You can simply speak exactly what you want and let the AI find the context within the screen and input all that content for you. So, definitely make sure to check out Aqua Voice. And that's pretty much all I wanted to show you in this video.

So, hope you guys found this video useful.