Install Cursor 🚀

By now your VS Code should be configured correctly. Let's do the same for Cursor.

1. Search for Cursor IDE and go to cursor.com.

2. Find the Download button, sometimes it's on the home page, sometimes elsewhere, and download it.

3. Run the installer. You'll notice it's exactly identical to the VS Code install, so just pick the same settings and let it install.

💡 Tip: both VS Code and Cursor are free. They even give you some AI agents and autocomplete for free, but limited. Once you start coding more, you'll probably want to upgrade to something like the individual plan (around $20 a month). Start with the free one and see how far you can push it.

First launch

Click Finish and launch Cursor. Create an account or sign in. It might ask for some config flags, just skip those for now. And here we go, this is Cursor.

💡 Heads up: sometimes Cursor opens in the agents view by default. Don't panic, it's the same app, it just has two views. The agentic one is where you don't really code, you ask agents to do things for you. In the beginning that's not what we want. Learn the basics first, then go agentic.

Open your project and fix the layout

Same as before, open your .extension project. It looks very similar to VS Code, just a few icons in different places and a slightly different agent. Overall the same app, with a different AI harness on top.

Let's tweak one thing so it matches VS Code:

1. Hold Ctrl and press comma to open Cursor Settings (or click the gear and type "cursor settings").

2. Go to VS Code Settings (see, it's still VS Code underneath) and look for orientation.

3. Change it from horizontal to vertical. It will ask you to restart Cursor. Do it.

Now the panel is on the side, exactly like VS Code. First step done.

🖼️ [IMAGE: a "Cursor = VS Code + a different AI harness" graphic, or a side-by-side of Cursor and VS Code looking nearly identical.]

Install the Python extension

You know this one already. Click Extensions, search python, and Install. You'll notice it installs the debugger but skips environments, so install environments as well. We need that.

Fix the missing Python button

Here's the catch. After installing, you still won't see the Python icon, and even right-clicking won't bring it back. I think Microsoft kind of blocks them from enabling it. But we can fix it, super simple.

1. Press F1 (or click the top bar) and open User Settings (JSON). This is your settings in written form.

2. Add this one setting:

"python.useEnvironmentsExtension": true

Hit Ctrl+S and the Python icon should appear right away.

⚠️ Important: two things have to be true. You installed the Python Environments extension, AND you added that setting. You need both.

You already have your environments

Click the Python icon and... you already have your virtual environments set up. That's because Cursor shares the same files as VS Code, it's the same application underneath. So everything you set up over there shows up here. That's exactly why it's so nice to have both: you jump between them with zero extra work.

Quick test:

from Autodesk.Revit.DB import *
OfCategory(BuiltInCategory.OST_Walls)

And you can see it's working pretty well. So our setup here is basically done.

Let the agent fix errors for you

One more thing. Sometimes when you create a Python terminal in Cursor you might hit an error, maybe a permissions thing. If you get any error at all, here's the move:

1. Copy the error message.

2. Open the agent (make sure you're in agent mode) and drop the error in.

3. It fixes it for you.

You can even ask it to change settings, like "activate the minimap in Cursor". Just mention whether you're in Cursor or VS Code, because the agent can get confused about which app it's editing. It will check the settings, analyze, and make the change. Super convenient.

🖼️ [IMAGE: screenshot of pasting an error into the Cursor agent and it proposing the fix.]

What's next

And now Cursor is configured for the Revit API and pyRevit too, sharing the same virtual environments as VS Code. Next lesson I'll take you on a quick tour and compare the two tools, so you know how to actually use them before we build your first tool. See you there.