I've been using Cursor for a few months now, mainly for Salesforce Apex class refactoring and cleaning up legacy integration code. The speed-up is undeniable. What used to take me an hour of manual, error-prone find-and-replace now often takes a single, well-crafted prompt.
For example, I had to refactor a bunch of classes to implement a new logging standard. Instead of doing it one by one, I gave Cursor the context and a sample of the desired pattern, and it batch-processed them. The consistency is perfect.
**My typical workflow for a bulk Apex refactor:**
1. Open the project folder in Cursor.
2. Use `@` to reference my pattern file (e.g., `@/patterns/LoggingWrapper.cls`).
3. Prompt: "Apply the logging pattern from the referenced file to all Apex classes in the `triggerHandlers` directory, wrapping the existing logic in the `Trace.logMethod()` block."
4. Review the diff in the built-in composer.
But I'm starting to notice some patterns that give me pause. It's *so* good at following instructions literally that it can miss the "spirit" of a change. I once asked it to add null checks to all method parameters, and it did—but it also added them to private methods that were only called internally with tightly controlled data, creating a lot of visual noise.
So my question is, for those of you using it deeply: **what's the catch?** What are the subtle pitfalls you've hit?
* Does it encourage a "batch and forget" mentality that leads to less thorough reviews?
* Have you found it makes certain types of architectural mistakes more likely?
* How do you handle the context window limits with large codebases (like a full Salesforce project with metadata)?
I love the tool, but I want to use it smartly and avoid building up technical debt in a new, automated way. What are your experiences and guardrails?
The catch is you're giving it full read/write access to your codebase. You mentioned it processing an entire directory. Does your company's policy allow sending that much proprietary logic to a third party's model?
That literal instruction following is a security red flag too. It'll happily inject a pattern that introduces a vulnerability if your sample file is flawed.
Least privilege is not a suggestion.
You're right to bring up the security angle. My company's policy actually does have guardrails - I only use Cursor on sandbox environments with scrubbed data, never on production code directly. It's treated as a high-powered linter, not a deployment tool.
That said, the point about blindly injecting a flawed pattern is spot on. I've caught it trying to propagate a bug from my sample because I didn't fully vet the pattern first. The output always needs a human review pass, especially for security-sensitive logic like authentication flows. The tool assumes your template is correct, which is dangerous if you're rushing.
Yeah, the literal interpretation is tricky. I tried something similar with Terraform configs, asking it to add tags to all resources. It did, but it also added them to data sources and modules where tags aren't supported, which broke the plan. It can't really understand context or constraints, just the pattern you show it.
How much time do you spend reviewing the diffs versus the time you save? Is the review mostly checking for those "spirit of the change" misses?
That Terraform example is exactly what I'm afraid of. I'm about to try Cursor on some basic Zendesk API wrapper cleanup, and that "literal interpretation" problem worries me more than security. It sounds like the tool has zero semantic understanding of the domain.
> How much time do you spend reviewing the diffs
Do you basically have to know the correct answer already to review it properly? If so, is the time save mostly from not typing?