Everything that changed in Cursor's biggest release ever

Cursor just dropped v 0.50 - there's some new stuff you'll definitely want to check out

I’m admittedly having a hard time keeping up with how fast Cursor is changing. Fortunately, you could for the most part ignore the changes, but you don’t want to miss out on some of the stuff in this latest release.

Whether it’s the improved inline edit, the background agent, or just chat exports, there’s something in this release for you. Let’s dig in 👇

The background agent (my favorite part)

The Cursor team is releasing a background agent (in preview) that will allow you to run multiple agents in parallel on a remote virtual machine. At any point, you can view the status of the agent’s task, send a follow-up, or take over.

This could unlock a ton of value really fast. When working on side projects, much of my workflow is setting the agent loose on a task and then waiting for a while. Being able to run multiple, unrelated feature requests in parallel is really going to speed things up.

While it’s still in preview, the background agent is a really exciting change to what writing code with AI is like. I suspect they dropped this when they did because of OpenAI’s Codex release, which also has agents mostly working in the background.

If you’re curious how to use Cursor’s background agent, the docs make a few things clear:

• Turn off privacy mode

• Turn on early access in settings

• Pray you’re in the beta group (at least until this is general release)

• Enable background agents

If you get a chance to try it out, let me know how it goes for you in the comments or by replying to this email.

Exporting chats

Personally, I’m excited for this because of this publication. It’s going to make it way easier to share my chat history in long-form guides like those I send out to paid members. If you’re really serious about using AI to grow your career, consider becoming a member.

Monthly subscriptions are $9, and yearly subscriptions are an even better deal 😉

A refresh to the inline edit

I personally don’t use the inline edit super often. I use the agent the most, then inline edit, then tab complete. Still, this release’s update to inline edit is exciting.

If you’re not familiar, you can trigger the inline code editor by selecting some code and pressing CMD + K

You’ll notice a refreshed UI, an option to scope changes to the whole file, and an option to send the changes to agent (which you can shortcut with CMD + L).

Loading your whole codebase in context

You can now use the @folders to add your entire codebase into context, but you’ll need to enable Full folder contents from settings. If a folder is too large to be included in context, you'll see a small icon on the context pill that lets you know what’s up.

I don’t see myself using this very often. The agent is very good about searching your codebase and deciding what is appropriate to add to context.

Simplified pricing

There are a couple of changes to pricing that might make it easier to understand what being a power user is costing you.

• All model usage is now unified into request-based pricing

• Max mode now uses token-based pricing (similar to how models API pricing works)

• Premium tool calls and long context mode are removed to keep it simple

I’m mostly unaffected by this - if you notice changes for you, I’d love to hear about it!

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Thanks for reading! If you want to see more Cursor posts, check out the archive of everything I’ve written on Cursor.