How Cursor Changed the Way I Build Software
Cursor didn’t just speed me up. It rewired how I think about structure, boundaries, and what code even is now.
⚡️ Cursor Is a Superpower — With a Catch
The moment I started using Cursor, I felt faster than ever.
Autocomplete was smart.
Test generation felt effortless.
Scaffolding features took minutes.
But then I hit a wall: doom loops.
Cursor kept getting stuck. It misunderstood intent, hallucinated logic, and broke in subtle, silent ways.
The problem? Me — and the limited context window.
Cursor had no structure to latch onto. No patterns to follow. It was guessing in a void. Cursor would drop important context — then proceed without structure, like trying to build a house without a blueprint. For example, it would lose track of variable purpose mid-function, invent method parameters that never existed, or hallucinate types that weren’t part of the domain.
So I changed.
🏗️ Cursor Forced Me to Take Structure Seriously
Cursor made it brutally obvious:
If your architecture is trash, your AI assistant is just accelerating failure.
For example: I once had Cursor generate an event handler that silently swallowed errors, skipped validation, and triggered a side-effect before the state change it depended on. The problem wasn’t Cursor — it was that my command/event flow wasn’t clear. Cursor guessed. It guessed wrong.
I started designing my systems differently:
✅ Commands with single-purpose handlers
✅ Events that reflect actual business intent
✅ Repositories with real boundaries
✅ Context objects for transactions and side-effects
Suddenly, Cursor could:
Follow the flow of data
Understand my naming patterns
Inject into existing layers with no confusion
It felt like magic — but it was just clean architecture. The real secret? Domains limit the context required for any single request. By organizing code around explicit boundaries, I reduced the amount of information Cursor needed to succeed — and kept it from falling into doom loops (well at least significantly redcued)
🧠 I Started Thinking in AI-Compatible Interfaces
I don’t design code “for humans” anymore. I design code for humans and the LLM sitting beside them.
If your class has one job and a name that says what it does, Cursor nails it. If you build modules with clear entry points, Cursor knows where to inject new logic.
LLMs love order. Cursor thrives on explicitness. For example, once I had Cursor try to inject a logging utility into a shared module — but because I hadn't clearly separated infra concerns from domain logic, it ended up placing the log call deep inside a command handler, breaking transactional boundaries. With clean, explicit layering, that mistake wouldn’t have happened. Cursor can’t guess what your architecture should have made obvious.
🛠️ Cursor Changed My Dev Habits
Before Cursor:
Hacky glue logic
Chained services
Ambiguous method names (naming things is hard - RequestContext vs ExecutionContext)
“Just toss it in utils” energy
After Cursor:
Named commands
Domain-driven boundaries
Isolated concerns
Predictable layers with clean names
Cursor didn’t change what I build — it changed how I think. How I approach solutions.
🔥 Hot Take: AI Is the Best Architecture Linter We’ve Ever Had
LLMs don’t get lost because they’re dumb.
They get lost because your code is vague, overloaded, and unclear (aka it's shit, sorry).
Cursor failing to autocomplete your method isn’t a bug.
It’s feedback.
If Cursor can’t trace your system, what makes you think your teammates can?
🏁 TL;DR
Cursor made me a better architect — not because it taught me anything, but because it made the cost of vague architecture painfully obvious.
What we used to call “good engineering hygiene” is now critical infrastructure. If your system lacks boundaries, structure, or intention — AI tools will reflect that back at you.
The better your structure, the better your AI becomes.
Cursor doesn’t reward hacks. It rewards DDD. It rewards clean separation. It rewards clarity.
Clean systems scale humans.
Great systems scale humans + machines.
And now I build for both.
