Cursor AI interacts with existing code

Cursor AI, as a smart IDE based on VS Code, has the ability to deeply understand and interact with existing code, allowing developers to write, optimize and maintain code more efficiently. This article will explore how Cursor AI can interact seamlessly with existing code and help developers improve programming efficiency.

What is interacting with existing code?

Existing code interaction refers to the process of intelligent communication, modification and optimization of existing code by developers. It usually involves understanding, searching, modifying, optimizing, and debugging the code without writing new code from scratch.

With the help of AI-assisted programming tools such as Cursor AI, existing code interactions can be more efficient.

How to use Cursor AI to interact with existing code

✅Code understanding and context perception

• Cursor AI adopts an intelligent indexing mechanism that can scan the entire code base, understand the code structure and variable relationships, and avoid developers from frequently looking up documents or searching for code.

✅Code Intelligent Search

• Through the @Codebase command, users can directly search for code base related content in the AI ​​chat box, for example:

   css copy edit @Codebase Find all files using the fetchData method

  Cursor AI will quickly locate relevant code snippets to reduce search time.

✅Intelligent code reconstruction

• After selecting the code, press Ctrl + K (Windows/Linux) or Cmd + K (Mac) and enter optimization instructions, for example:

   Copy edits and reformat this function to make it more in line with the TypeScript specification

  AI will automatically optimize the code structure to improve readability and consistency.

✅ Cross-file code update

• If a function needs to be modified simultaneously in multiple files, Cursor AI can make changes across files to ensure code consistency and reduce the risk of errors in manual modification.

✅Intelligent debugging and error repair

• Cursor AI can detect potential errors in code and provide optimization suggestions. For example, when a bug occurs in the code, you can directly enter it in the chat box:

   Is there any problem with copying and editing this function? How to optimize?

Example

For example, refactoring, or asking questions about the code. After entering the prompt, we click the "Submit Edit" button to get the modification:

Code changes in Cursor are displayed in differential form. The red line indicates the rows that will be deleted due to the change, while the green line indicates the new changes that will be added: