Composer mode
Composer is Cursor's multi-file editing interface, where you describe a change and the tool proposes coordinated edits across several files at once, presented as diffs you review together rather than one file at a time.
The distinction from single-file chat is coordination. A change that touches a route, a handler, a type, and a test is one logical change, and reviewing it as four unrelated suggestions loses the thread. Composer keeps them together.
It suits work where you already know roughly which files are involved. For work where finding the files is the hard part, a more autonomous agent that searches on its own is the better fit.
What this means in practice
Attach the relevant files with @ mentions before describing the change. Composer works from what you give it, so scoping is the difference between a coherent multi-file diff and a plausible guess about where the code lives.
Prompts for the tools this applies to
Related terms
- Agent mode
Agent mode is the setting in an AI coding tool where the model can act rather than only answer: creating and editing files, running terminal commands, and iterating on the result.
- Cursor rules
Cursor rules are project-level instructions stored in your repository that Cursor applies to every AI request — conventions, framework versions, patterns to follow, things never to do.
- Context retrieval
Context retrieval is how an AI coding tool decides which parts of your codebase to read for a given request.