# Cursor is 1st of 5 on letting developers see and approve every change an agent makes

*Cursor is 1st of 5 on Feedback Bench for reviewing and approving the agent's changes, and 2nd of 7 on IDE integration, behind Claude Code. The 28 users who praise it first-hand mostly measure it against rival agents, and some who left say it is the one thing they miss.*

What users credit, Cursor. By Feedback Bench, 15 October 2026. Feedback Bench 1.1. Posts 2026-08-31 to 2026-10-18; bench built 2026-10-19. Web: https://feedbackbench.com/coding-agents/#/articles/cursor-is-1st-of-5-on-letting-developers-see-and-approve-every-change-an-agent-makes

On 11 September a developer posted in r/ClaudeCode, the forum for a rival agent, with a question about Cursor:

> [is there a way for claude code to show what changes it has made to files? i currently work with cursor, and i really appreciate being able to verify what the agent has done to a given file. cursor does a great job of showing which lines have been changed and how, and it even lets you approve or reject the changes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1wd83uw/verifying_changes_to_files/)

One answer came from a Claude Code user, who said the VS Code extension "[does basically the cursor flow](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1wd83uw/verifying_changes_to_files/p98ih0p/)". The phrase was offered as a rebuttal, but it says something too. In a forum for another product, a user of that product reached for Cursor's name to describe the standard.

This is the strength we found. In seven weeks of posts, Cursor's users single out one thing. They can see every change the agent made, inside the editor they already work in, and approve, reject or undo it one piece at a time. Cursor is 1st of 5 on the bench criterion "[Reviewing and approving the agent's changes](https://feedbackbench.com/criteria/verify.change_review_ui.md)", and the only one of the five whose interval sits wholly above the category norm. It is also 2nd of 7 on "[IDE and editor integration](https://feedbackbench.com/criteria/setup.ide_integration.md)", narrowly behind Claude Code.

**Exhibit 1: Cursor is 1st of 5 on reviewing and approving the agent's changes.** Customer love on the Feedback Bench criterion, with 95% intervals. Cursor is the only agent clearly above the norm. Agents with fewer than 30 rated user-weeks are not ranked.

| Agent | Customer love | 95% interval | Rated user-weeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | 0.567 | 0.538 to 0.599 | 80 |
| Zed | 0.492 | 0.476 to 0.508 | 30 |
| Google Antigravity | 0.486 | 0.468 to 0.503 | 35 |
| OpenAI Codex | 0.481 | 0.458 to 0.505 | 67 |
| Claude Code | 0.447 | 0.417 to 0.477 | 140 |

*Posts 31 Aug to 18 Oct 2026. n = rated user-weeks.*

We want to be straight about the size. Twenty-eight people describe this first-hand, after we removed reply bots, vendors, staff and superfans and read every candidate post. Feedback Bench counts 13,122 Cursor users in the same window, so this is a small group. It is an intense one, though, and its most striking members are people who no longer use Cursor for most of their work.

## What the people who left still name

A good share of the praise for this review screen came from people who had left.

The most direct came from a developer in a thread started on 27 September, titled "[1 year of cursor, switched to claude, best decision](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wrx24u/1_year_of_cursor_switched_to_claude_best_decision/)". The thread was mostly about price, and the user agreed with the move. Then:

> [i still would go back just because of the ide integration and the approval flow. this is the only thing i miss. you are involved way more with what you build.](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wrx24u/1_year_of_cursor_switched_to_claude_best_decision/pci2lr6/)

In the same thread another user, a year on Cursor before the switch, wrote that "the only thing i'm missing is sensible highlights of changed regions by agent that i can individually approve", and that for now they "cope with magit-diff in emacs" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wrx24u/1_year_of_cursor_switched_to_claude_best_decision/pcm6enp/)). A third had moved to Claude Code, liked it, and still felt they had "less control over what the agent is doing compared to cursor" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wupbj2/whats_the_appeal_to_use_claude_code_or_codex_if/)). A fourth, a heavy user who moved to Claude Code and Codex for the usage limits, posted in r/ClaudeCode on 31 August that the desktop app's diff tab did not show all the changes, "with codex and cursor i can clearly see my diffs" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1w33h7n/why_is_claude_code_not_fixing_the_code_changes/)).

Four more who moved to rival agents named it the same way in the week to 18 October. None of the eight says they left over the editor. What they took with them was a habit of reviewing changes one by one, and they now look for it in tools that do it less well.

Across the 28, 17 measure Cursor's review against a named rival agent, and three asked how to get it in Claude Code. The wider bench points the same way. Users asked for "a visible panel showing all file changes" in 22 user-weeks. Twenty-one came from users of other agents and one from a Cursor user, where Cursor's share of the criterion would predict about four. Requests for "per-file and per-hunk accept/reject of changes" came mostly from GitHub Copilot and Google Antigravity users.

**Exhibit 2: More than half of the 28 measure Cursor's review against another agent.** What the people who praise Cursor's in-editor review say about it. Every candidate post read; bots, staff, vendors and superfans removed.

|  | People, of the 28 who praise Cursor's change review first-hand; one person can be in several rows |
|---|---|
| Compare it with a named rival agent | 17 people |
| Name the approve or reject step | 9 people |
| Moved to another agent and still name it | 8 people |
| Asked how to get it in Claude Code | 3 people |

*Posts 31 Aug to 18 Oct 2026. Reddit, X and G2.*

## The details users credit

Most users do not stop at "the diff view". They name particular decisions, and those decisions tell the team what to keep.

The first is scope. One developer explained their favourite function as "the diff of the changes my latest prompt did (not the diff since the last commit)", and then the ability to "go through them and approve / undo one by one in a really convenient way" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1ws0efi/dont_people_appreciate_an_ide/pcjwara/)). Git can show a diff, and a skeptic in the same thread said so. The reply from the thread's author is the best case we found for why Cursor's version is different: it "feels more efficient to look at diffs as they've been written for specific feature and fix, rather than at some moment when you're about to commit" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1ws0efi/dont_people_appreciate_an_ide/pckvfp1/)). Review happens at the moment of the change, while the user still remembers the request.

The second is granularity. Nine of the 28 name the approval step, and the clearest description came from a user answering "what's better about Cursor than Claude Code":

> [the big cursor feature for me is the ide gui elements for reviewing the changes an agent has made. after a response, you can click through the touched files, accepting, modifying or rejecting each of the changes to the code.](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1whtb6c/whats_better_about_cursor_than_claude_code/pa52w99/)

The word "modifying" is the third detail. The review happens in a working editor, so the user can fix a line instead of rejecting the whole change. A user six months into Cursor described it as being able to "easily review and edit and then approve all of the work agents do", while "still manually changing small things that just take a few minutes" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wt2iuf/question_about_vscode_claude_compared_to_cursor/)). Against Codex, the thread author above put the difference more bluntly: "you don't have a button to approve/reject each edit. it's still oriented towards prompt and forget" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1ws0efi/dont_people_appreciate_an_ide/pckufmd/)).

## Who loves it most

The people in this group are mostly developers who still read their code and expect to answer for it. They post on r/cursor in threads with titles such as "[don't people appreciate an IDE?](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1ws0efi/dont_people_appreciate_an_ide/)" and "[what's the appeal to use claude code or codex if...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wupbj2/whats_the_appeal_to_use_claude_code_or_codex_if/)". Several say they have used Claude Code or Codex and prefer those agents' models. What they will not give up is the moment where they look at each change and decide. A G2 reviewer put the whole case in one line, "[i can see the diff easily, very convenient for review of what ai coded](https://www.g2.com/products/cursor/reviews/cursor-review-13598264)".

Another put it more simply: cursor "makes the plan/diff loop feel way less mysterious" ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1wupbj2/whats_the_appeal_to_use_claude_code_or_codex_if/pd5cewn/)).

## What it tells the team

Cursor does not market this. On 15 October its homepage opened with "Cursor is your coding agent for building ambitious software" and described agents that "build, test, and demo features end to end for you to review". The page did not mention diffs, hunks or accept and reject buttons. The docs page on reviewing code says, in one line, that "the diff view shows changes as they happen". Users describe it in far more detail than Cursor does, and people who moved to rival agents still ask for it by name.

The first lesson is to protect the three details users name: the diff scoped to the last prompt, the per-file click-through with accept, modify and reject, and review inside the editor rather than in a separate viewer. When the keep and discard buttons failed to appear for one user in September, the post read like a broken core tool, not a missing extra.

The second lesson is where the strength could reach further. Cursor's newer surfaces, the agents window, Projects, cloud agents and the phone app, are where agent work now starts. Users ask for the same per-change review there, for diffs between branches in the changes view, and for review that works on a phone. Users who already trust the review in the editor could take it with them to those surfaces.

## A note on limits

Twenty-eight people is a small base, and we counted only first-hand praise. A few users argue that git or the rival agents' editor extensions do the same job, and for some workflows they may. Some users also feel the newer agents window pulls them away from the code, and seven complain about the review screens themselves, mostly bugs.

## How we read this

The window runs from 31 August to 18 October 2026. It covers 29,322 posts about Cursor from Reddit, X and review sites, after we removed automated, staff and vendor accounts. We wrote the rule before counting. A person counts if they praise, first-hand, how Cursor shows or lets them approve the agent's changes in the editor, if they left and name it as what they miss, or if they ask a rival agent for Cursor's view. General advice on reviewing code, automated review bots and demo videos did not count. We read every candidate post, checked each counted author's other posts across all agents, removed two promoters and one superfan, and left out 13 borderline posts. Bench positions come from Feedback Bench, where large language models label each post and agents are ranked only with at least 30 rated user-weeks on a criterion.

## Sources

- Feedback Bench, [Cursor agent page](https://feedbackbench.com/agents/cursor.md)
- Feedback Bench, [Reviewing and approving the agent's changes](https://feedbackbench.com/criteria/verify.change_review_ui.md)
- Feedback Bench, [IDE and editor integration](https://feedbackbench.com/criteria/setup.ide_integration.md)
- Cursor, [Homepage](https://cursor.com), read 15 October 2026
- Cursor, [Features](https://cursor.com/features), read 15 October 2026
- Cursor Docs, [Reviewing and testing code](https://cursor.com/docs/agent/review), read 15 October 2026