I've been playing around with Cursor[1] recently, and while I haven't started the paid plan yet, I am starting to think I will. I don't think it will replace any of my typical development, but it's well-suited for quick prototypes and small changes that I don't want to write myself.
One recent example was the sidebar design on the left of this blog. That was initially generated via Cursor.
Anyway... Yesterday I was thinking about the MCU, trying to work out what films I've seen, and if I've missed any out, based on the timeline. So I thought, surely I can just get Cursor to build me a basic timeline? Sure enough, it could.
Once I had a basic timeline, I wondered if I could use this as a challenge to see how far I could go with this site, purely using Cursor and not writing any code myself. So I've spent just a few hours, asking Cursor for new features, design tweaks, and small corrections to the actual source data when it missed a film or two.
As for the final result, you can find the code on GitHub.
The overall functionality is simple, it displays all MCU films (inc. multiverse, and related films like Venom), and lets you track which ones you have watched.
But there's also a grid mode for easier viewing.
A section for upcoming films.
And some overall statistics.
As you can see, it's not exactly the most complex site. But for a personal tool, I think it's perfect. And this type of quick project is one of the main reasons why I expect I will continue using Cursor.
Which leads me to my recent thoughts about this type of AI-powered programming. I'm starting to imagine a future where this type of code is not generated like I did here, which is to keep feeding suggestions until a result is delivered, before using that as a "product". But rather, these types of tools/UIs can be built dynamically and in real-time.
This shifts from asking to 'build a website showing all MCU films...' to simply saying 'show me the MCU films,' with the timeline UI being generated and displayed in real-time. In the future maybe we won't have developers generating code via AI tools, maybe people will use AI, and the AI can provide relevant visualisations/results directly.
An AI code editor. ↩︎