Dear vibe coders, this is no longer a product for you IF you are not willing to: bring the cash/learn minmaxing

Senior engineer here. Although I agree that the company fucked up big time in the past 3 months with business (shady) decisions. If you know how to properly use Auto Mode and if you "know what you're doing", then Cursor is still the best tool in the market for the job. Specially if you can combine it with a terminal AI agent (Cursor, Cursor etc).

Cursor is NO LONGER the tool where you can select Agent Mode > Sonnet 4 Thinking and prompt whatever the hell you want like a degenerate for an entire month and expect to just make it work for a $20/60 sub without extra cash usage or without facing rate-limits. AI usage is very costy and Cursor is not longer in the "Burn VC money" mode.

Most vibe coders can't "do more using less" because they lack IT fundamentals, and that's fine, one of the wonders Cursor did was to democratize software development for non-IT people. But the game changed, honeymoon is over, investors want their money back and now the rules changed.

If you are a pure vibe coder with little to no IT knowledge, this probably means this you will need more usage for results, means you will face either rate-limits or high extra costs - downvote me all you want, but it's a fact - And from my perspective, this is not friendly environment.

Learn the basics of software engineering. Learn how to make a good prompt. Learn RuleFiles. Learn which model is the best one for the job (Spoiler: Thinking models are NOT BiS). Be willing to run Auto Mode most of the time. Learn how to switch between Ask and Agent modes.

Vibe coding is possible, but it's no longer noob-friendly. Get good or get expensive.

TLDR: Learn how to vibe code the right way or expect frustration.