Cursor 3 Release: Rebuilding the interface from scratch around Agent, no longer just a fork of VS Code

According to 1M AI News monitoring, the AI programming tool Cursor has released version 3.0, featuring a completely new interface built from the ground up around Agent. It is independent from the earlier IDE that was forked from VS Code. The new interface natively supports multi-code-repository workspaces, enabling users to run multiple local and cloud Agents at the same time and switch between them seamlessly: pull cloud tasks to local and iterate quickly with the in-house programming model Composer 2, or push long-running local tasks to the cloud so they continue running after you close your laptop. The sidebar unifies the display of all Agents, including tasks launched from mobile, Web, desktop, Slack, GitHub, and Linear. Cloud Agents automatically generate demos and screenshots of work results for users to review and confirm.

Design Mode, launched alongside it, lets users directly annotate and select UI elements in an integrated browser and send them to an Agent, which is well suited for front-end iteration. The new command /worktree isolates task execution in a separate git worktree, while /best-of-n runs the same task in parallel across multiple models and compares the results. Other updates include Agent Tabs for side-by-side viewing of multiple conversations, the Cursor Marketplace plugin marketplace (supporting MCP, skills, and sub-Agent extensions), performance optimizations for large-file diff rendering, and enterprise governance features.

Cursor 3’s release comes as competition among AI programming tools intensifies. According to Menlo Ventures data, Anthropic’s Claude Code has captured up to 54% of the AI programming market. OpenAI’s Codex is also rapidly catching up and offering unlimited usage to attract users. Composer 2, the in-house programming model that Cursor released last month, was found to essentially be built using the open-source model Kimi 2.5 licensed from Moonshot AI, and it was not proactively disclosed at the time of release, sparking controversy over user trust. Cursor 3 shifts the user role from directly writing code to managing and orchestrating multiple Agents—its product response to changing competitive dynamics in search of a differentiated positioning. After upgrading Cursor, you can experience it by entering Cmd+Shift+P -> Agents Window; the original IDE remains available.