Module 1 · Foundations — what Cursor is Lesson 3 of 15
The screen: where every control lives
A tour of the interface you will live in — a familiar editor, plus a chat panel, an inline edit mode, and an agent mode that changes many files at once and shows you the result as a diff. Every panel has a reason to exist, and half of them are the difference between a chat and a system.
The concept
The interface of Cursor is a familiar editor, plus a chat panel, an inline edit mode, and an agent mode that changes many files at once and shows you the result as a diff. That sentence is worth slowing down on, because the single biggest cause of bad output is not a bad prompt — it is a good prompt typed into the wrong place.
The history list is your memory of what worked. Name your conversations. The temporary or private mode is for anything you would not want in an account's history. The settings panel holds the personal instructions that apply to everything, which is where your context belongs rather than repeated at the top of every message.
Do this once, properly: make the same small change twice — once with inline edit, once with the project-wide agent — and notice the difference in how much you had to re-read afterwards. It takes fifteen minutes and saves you those fifteen minutes every week after.
Worked example
Inline edit is for one selection; the agent panel is for a change across the project. Choosing the wrong one is where most wasted time lives.
Your practice task
Spend fifteen minutes doing nothing but clicking. Open every panel, rename one conversation, and save one setting you will want again. Fluency with the screen is what stops you re-explaining yourself every session.
Do this before moving on. Reading a solution teaches the shape of it; typing it teaches you.
Key takeaway
The interface of Cursor is a familiar editor, plus a chat panel, an inline edit mode, and an agent mode that changes many files at once and shows you the result as a diff.
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