Ask HN: Cursor is productive for an hour, then burns my application down

7•campervans•1d ago

I can control it well for an hour or two using .md files, and breaking everything down into small tasks, but then out of nowhere it burns everything down, goes into 10x technical debt and replaces everything with placeholders

Comments

Fin_Code•1d ago

You are working against LLM attention. A LLM looks at a conversation and focuses on its attention points. Usually the start and end. Your previous work falls into the out of attention space and gets nuked.

If your asking how to have everything attention we currently can't.

gravez•1d ago

can you explain a bit more what do you mean by burning down? and what do you use .md files for? Documenting the code?

HenryBemis•1d ago

My code (that ChatGPT writes for me is from 500 to 1000 lines). Every 5-7 versions, it starts messing things up.

I keep the working versions on a Word file on a Landscape, A3, 3 columns (version number, comment/changelog, the_code)(yes, cheap, scalable, easy).

So, every 5-7 versions, I start a new chat. I ask ChatGPT to read/write a summary/description of the code, and then I proceed to ask it for new changes/enhancements.

matternous•1d ago

Wait until you learn about git

yb6677•18h ago

One tip I have found - start new conversations windows when changing focus, so it doesn’t refer to history and make wild assumptions.

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