Get your scorecards out, we have yet another update in the ever expanding world of code editors. The barrier to fixing your web site just dropped significantly.
Cursor today announced a new Visual Editor for its increasingly popular developer tool. The company says the new tool “brings together your web app, codebase, and powerful visual editing tools, all in the same window.”
You can now use that window to click and drag, inspect web components (like you can do in traditional web browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari), and also make changes to design elements and properties like font sizes, opacity, spacing and a lot more.
Of course, the real magic here is integrated AI. Because Cursor is an AI-first IDE (Integrated Development Environment) you can lean on an assistant to help lend a hand for your web design work. In my testing today I found it to be pretty impressive. Clicking on an H1 element, for instance, added context to the built-in Cursor AI assistant. From there, I could then use natural language as in any other Chatbot, and have it help me adjust the formatting, brainstorm marketing copy and, essentially, perform tasks you would previously have needed to execute in a dedicated web design tool.
The new Visual Editor is available now to Cursor users with a software update. One nifty onboarding trick: when you click the “Try” button, the editor opens up with the cursor.com web site loaded and visual inspector panel opened to its right. If you’ve worked on web design before, the layout feels immediately intuitive. Click on elements and use the inspector to season to taste. All easy, and all integrated within the IDE, without the need to jump to another, separate tool.
We’re seeing what amounts to a sort of neo Browser Wars, this time taking place in the traditional IDE. More and more capability is being added to these tools, stretching the feature set and capabilities far beyond the original target audience: coders. Now, semi-technical-but-definitely-not-a-dev people like me can actually use these editors to get work done.
We’re seeing what amounts to a sort of neo Browser Wars, this time taking place in the traditional IDE.
Convergence is happening at lightning speed with companies like Microsoft (Visual Studio Code), Cursor, and new entrant to this space Google (Antigravity) are clearly envisioning a future where these tools become collaborative workspaces, not just for code, but for all sorts of productivity tasks such as document management, task management, event planning (like a conference for instance, no problem in an IDE!), web design (now built-in), legal document management, real estate analysis, etc.
I call it the Integrated Personal Environment. Though I suppose that p-word could be Productivity.
The realm of possibilities within this emerging, nextgen platform is extraordinary, largely thanks to the emergence of artificial intelligence. Previously, an IDE required its user — someone with deep coding experience — to manually create files and type lines of code to create software, apps and scripts. That’s no longer necessary. The rise of vibe coding has generated a rocket ship of one-shot coding quarterbacks who prompt their way to app greatness. Or not. Flip a coin. Jesus take the wheel!
But there’s also a middle ground, where we can leverage AI, but still actively collaborate within the IDE or IPE to get things done while remaining very much hands on. I’ve been doing this for under six months now, and although I’m a newbie, I often feel bionic.
Yes, I still start my day with an espresso and email. But then it’s on to Cursor where I can ask Claude Code: what are today’s tasks? And he will quickly oblige and start assigning me (me, the human!) action items. Then my morning can go any number of directions. Claude might suggest working on a post for Stark Insider. Or maybe we need to check in on that new backup script we created collaboratively with Codex yesterday. Or, we might need to poll the team for updates on their presentations for the upcoming Third Mind AI Summit.
I find it extraordinary how quickly my workflow has changed in such a short amount of time. Likely others feel the same way too.
This is why I believe there is so much momentum in this space and that the stakes are getting larger each passing day. No wonder when I open Cursor each day there’s a high probability of seeing an update available message. I swear it feels like every other day there’s something new.
Companies such as Webflow, Framer, Wix, Squarespace, etc. would do well to keep a close eye on this space.
In any case, the world of web design looks ripe for disruption. This isn’t the first salvo in this space, and it surely won’t be the last, but it’s a big step for existing Cursor users, and those looking to supercharge their existing design workflows thanks to some AI assistance.
Update: As I was writing this article, OpenAI released GPT-5.2.