Cursor Beginners

Cursor's strength is also a first-week trap: there are too many ways to ask the agent for help. Tab completion, inline edits, Composer agent mode, the Agents Window, Background Agents, voice input, Design Mode. New users default to whichever surface they tried first. The result is that they use 20% of the product and conclude that Cursor is just VS Code with autocomplete. This course fixes that by mapping each surface to the kind of task it actually fits.

Course objectives

Pick the right Cursor surface (Tab, Composer, Agents Window, Background Agents) for a given task.
Use .cursorrules to make Cursor's behaviour consistent across sessions.
Read a repo well enough that Composer's first answer has the context it needs.
Use plan mode and reject and reset early.
Run a Background Agent on a long task and review its visual demo before merging.
Decide whether to delegate, review carefully, or stay fully human-owned.

Target audience

Developers and senior developers joining a team that has standardised on Cursor. Engineering managers welcome but should expect to type.

Prerequisites

Has shipped code through a Git workflow.
Comfortable in VS Code or a similar editor.
Has Cursor 3 installed and signed in before the course.
Has completed the pre-course self-assessment.

About the instructors: Rogier Muller & Vasilis Tsolis

Rogier Muller is CTO of BlueMonks Group, an Amsterdam-based fintech compliance company, and co-founder of several companies. He`s a lifelong coder who moved early into AI-assisted software development. Today, he is the only person in the world to combine official ambassador roles across the three leading agentic engineering platforms: Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex. Rogier has hosted numerous events worldwide and works closely with engineering teams, founders, and AI tooling companies on the practical adoption of agentic software development. His specific expertise is using agentic engineering in highly regulated environments, including but not limited to fintech, financial services, KYC/CDD, AML, GDPR, AFM-supervised contexts, auditability, data isolation, and compliance-heavy software delivery.

Vasilis Tsolis is a pioneer in document intelligence and agentic coding helping teams to change how they work across industries. He is an official Ambassador for Cursor, OpenAI Codex and n8n. He is the partner of Cognitiv+, an AI consultancy and software factory that helps organisations practically implement and adopt AI with enterprise confidence. He has co-founded several companies and trains development teams across the US and EU on AI-assisted coding, with a consistent focus on integrating it into real workflows without losing control of the codebase. Background: engineering and law, twenty years across AI, construction, energy, and tech. Vasilis has worked with JPMorgan, Intel, PwC, and others along the way.

Module 1.
The Cursor surface map. Tab for keystroke-level help. Composer for multi-file edits. Agents Window for orchestrating multiple agents. Background Agents for long-running cloud tasks. Voice for hands-busy moments. Design Mode for UI work. The mental model: pick the surface that matches the time horizon of the task.

Module 2.
Reading the repo. Codebase indexing helps but is not enough. Lab: write a short context note for the participant's own repo.

Module 3.
Spec-driven prompting. Constraints and acceptance criteria. Lab: rewrite three weak prompts as specs.

Module 4.
.cursorrules and team conventions. The Cursor equivalent of CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md. What goes in, what stays out, why short rule files outperform long ones. Lab: each participant writes a starter .cursorrules for their stack.

Module 5.
Background Agents and the visual demo. Cursor's most underused feature. The agent runs in a cloud VM, opens a PR with a screen recording showing the change running. Lab: each participant kicks off a Background Agent on a real ticket and reviews its demo before merging.

Module 6.
Delegate, review, own. The decision model. What goes to Tab. What goes to Composer. What gets reviewed carefully. What stays fully human-owned.

Practical information

Duration: 1 day
Price: 10 900 NOK
Language: English
Format: Classroom, virtual classroom, or in-company

FAQ

Hva er Cursor Beginners?
Cursor Beginners er et introduksjonskurs som lærer deg hvordan du bruker Cursor som en AI-assistert kodeeditor for å skrive, forstå og forbedre kode mer effektivt.

Hvem passer kurset for?
Kurset passer for utviklere og tekniske roller som ønsker å komme i gang med Cursor og AI-assistert utvikling, enten som nybegynner eller med begrenset erfaring.

Trenger jeg forkunnskaper for å delta?
Nei, kurset krever ikke erfaring med Cursor, men grunnleggende programmeringsforståelse er en fordel.

Er kurset praktisk rettet?
Ja, kurset er hands-on og inkluderer øvelser hvor du jobber direkte med kode og bruker Cursor til å løse oppgaver og forbedre arbeidsflyt.

Hva lærer jeg som er nyttig i praksis?
Du lærer hvordan du bruker Cursor til å generere kode, forstå eksisterende kode, feilsøke, refaktorere og jobbe mer effektivt i utviklingsprosesser. Cursor fungerer som en AI-assistert kodeeditor som hjelper med blant annet kodegenerering, forklaring og forbedring

Kursavgift:	10,900 NOK
Kurset inkluderer:	Course documentation, exercises, lunch and refreshments for in class events only
Timer	09:00 - 16:00
Varighet:	1 dager
Språk	English