When comparing AI tools, you’re really asking one question: what turns tickets into merged, working code with the fewest issues? Our first post in this series covered Cosine and Devin. In this post, we turn to Cursor, a VS Code-based editor powered with AI.

Cosine and Cursor share the same end goal: shipping quality code faster. It’s useful for teams and individual developers looking to adopt AI into their workflow to compare how each tool performs.

Cursor: AI IDE

Cursor is an AI code editor built with developer flow in mind. It features multi-line autocomplete, inline editing, and an agent that can scan your codebase, edit across files, run commands, and iterate until the job is done.

Its agent works with checkpoints – snapshots of your project state – and can require confirmation before running commands. You can also scope its context to specific files or folders. The result is an IDE that feels both faster and safer, enabling developers to move quickly without compromising their trust in their tools.

If you’re committed to working in an IDE, Cursor is an attractive option. However, here are some things to consider:

• Hands-on, not handoff – Cursor keeps a dev in the loop to steer edits and approve commands,  but you can’t truly offload tickets.

• Lower end-to-end autonomy – Cursor’s agent accelerates edits, but doesn’t own validations/CI/review the way an autonomous PR-shipping agent does.

• Enterprise deployment limits – No fully air-gapped/on-prem deployment; governance stays editor/device-centric. 

Cursor can be a great choice if you’re looking for an AI IDE that integrates with your local tools and files, but local environments aren’t always ideal for developers, and flexible deployment is crucial for certain enterprises.

Cosine: AI teammate

Cosine is an autonomous AI software engineer built to take tickets to PRs. Hand off a Jira/Linear issue (or prompt in Slack), and Cosine plans the work, edits code across your repo, runs checks, and opens a pull request for review. It’s designed for asynchronous work and parallel iteration, allowing teams to clear backlogs while engineers focus on higher-value tasks.

Cosine’s agent-first approach emphasises governed delivery. PR diffs are grouped and explained, CI status is surfaced, and a merge panel lets you complete the loop with your normal approvals and branch protections. Route tasks from Slack or your tracker, respond to PR comments, and keep everything auditable within your existing Git/GitHub process.

• True ticket offload – Assign from Jira/Linear/Slack; Cosine plans the work, edits the repo, validates, and opens a PR, so you review/merge instead of babysitting edits. Concurrency lets multiple tickets run in parallel.

• Lifecycle ownership – Cosine handles the ticket, code, tests/CI, PR loop; surfaces status, responds to PR feedback, and provides a merge panel, reducing manual stitching to get changes over the line.

• Secure enterprise deployment – Customer VPC, or fully air-gapped on-prem. Governance lives at the platform/PR layer (branch protections, approvals, auditability), not per-developer editor setups.

Cosine is an incredibly capable coding agent for your backlog, whether that’s fixing bugs, refactoring, or assisting with complex tasks. It can also build from the ground up and ship brand new features. For instance, our blank projects allow you to start from scratch, and our AutoDoc feature was planned, tested, and implemented by Cosine itself in under an hour.

Our newly released CLI also allows developers to build directly from their terminal. Devs can kick off tasks in the browser and then continue in the terminal. Now, Cosine users have a choice between working in our cloud platform or in their local environment, fully accommodating developer preferences.

Which tool is right for you?

The right tool depends on how you want AI to fit into your development flow.

If you’re looking for an AI-powered IDE that accelerates editing, keeps you in the loop, and enhances day-to-day coding speed, Cursor can be a strong choice. It’s particularly well-suited to developers who want more assistance inside their editor without giving up control.

But if your team’s challenge is less about typing speed and more about moving tickets across the finish line, Cosine is built for that. We didn’t set out to just build another tool. Cosine is a unified experience inside a purpose-built platform; a fully autonomous software engineer that understands, executes, and solves. Our continued development of Cosine is dedicated to adapting to developer workflows, wherever that may be.

By taking ownership of tasks end-to-end, from planning and editing, through validation and PR delivery, Cosine functions less like an assistant and more like a reliable teammate. It’s especially powerful once integrated with your trackers and CI/CD pipeline, where its ability to handle multiple tickets in parallel becomes clear.

Our recommendation? Try both. See how Cursor enhances your local flow, and see how Cosine transforms your backlog. We’re confident that once you give Cosine complex, integrated work to run with, you’ll understand why teams use it to truly scale their output.

You can get started with Cosine today on our free plan and see how it handles your real tasks.