Next level AI-driven development with Cursor - .cursorrules, Notepads and MCP services

Learn to use Cursor’s Agent Mode, configure .cursorrules with JSON, leverage Notepads, and integrate Model Context Protocol services for larger projects.

Overview

At the last AI tinkerers, I was convinced by another attendee to switch IDEs from VSCode to Cursor. Since then I’ve been learning how to get the most from Cursor and want to share several of my findings.

1) Agent Mode - Cursor’s superpower (but now in Co-Pilot)

Quick basics - how to use it, how is composer + agent (+ yolo?) different from chatting.
how to get agent mode to work better - context, @
2) Building / working with larger projects, frameworks like NextJS
The .cursorrules file - why you should have one in all your projects
- The FORMAT matters - markdown is not best! JSON is better
- Several repositories for best practice cursor rules files.
Notepads - what happens when you do and don’t use these.
Model Context Protocol servers and services and when/why you would use these while developing
3) Time permitting - the AI Secretary .cursorrules file - going beyond coding in Cursor

Tech stack