289 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
289 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
Final Direction Summary: Replacing Cursor for Your Use Case
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Core Goal
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You want:
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A Cursor-like chat experience
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Integrated with:
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your codebase
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Google Cloud services
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your product workflows
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Without paying for Cursor or depending on OpenAI/Cursor infra.
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We aligned on an approach that gives you this, while keeping costs, maintenance, and risk manageable.
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The Chosen Architecture
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1. Use VSCodium as your editor base
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Instead of Cursor or VS Code:
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Open-source
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Redistributable
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No telemetry/licensing issues
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Compatible with VS Code extensions
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Lets you ship your own IDE experience
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You are not building a new editor, you are building a product cockpit on top of a proven editor shell.
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2. Build your product experience as an Extension (not a fork)
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We agreed:
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Extension-first is the right V1 strategy.
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Because with an extension you can:
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Add your own Product OS UI
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Build your own chat interface
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Integrate Gemini + GCP + tools
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Ship cross-platform quickly
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Avoid the heavy maintenance cost of a fork
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A fork only becomes justified later if you need:
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Hard shell changes
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Locked-down layouts
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Enterprise kiosk behavior
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3. Use an Open-Source Chat UI Instead of Cursor
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To avoid building chat UI from scratch, we landed on:
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✅ Best starting point: Open-source chat extensions
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You can reuse or extend:
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Option A (Recommended)
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Copilot Chat UI (open-sourced by Microsoft)
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Production-grade chat UI
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MIT license
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Can be repointed to:
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your backend
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Gemini / Vertex AI
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Gives you:
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streaming responses
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history
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context-aware UX
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Option B (Fast prototyping)
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Continue
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Open-source
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Already works in VSCodium
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Can connect to:
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local LLMs
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remote APIs (your Gemini backend)
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Great for validating UX quickly
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This gives you:
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A Cursor-like chat UX without Cursor.
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4. Gemini + Control Plane replaces Cursor’s backend
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Instead of:
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Cursor → OpenAI → Cursor tools
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You will have:
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VSCodium → Your Extension → Control Plane → Gemini (Vertex AI) + GCP Tools
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Your backend becomes the intelligence layer:
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/chat endpoint → Gemini
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/tools/invoke → deploy, logs, analytics, campaigns, etc
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policy enforcement
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cost tracking
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product-aware reasoning
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This gives you:
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full ownership
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no vendor lock-in
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better monetization control
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5. Code Generation Does NOT require rebuilding everything
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We clarified:
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You do NOT need to rebuild a full editor or execution engine to generate code.
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You only need:
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Minimal tooling:
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Model returns:
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structured diffs
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optional commands
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Extension:
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previews changes
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applies patches
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optionally runs tests
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Everything else (editing, git, terminals) is already provided by VSCodium.
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So you get:
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Cursor-like “generate code and apply it” behavior
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without building Cursor from scratch.
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6. Direct Cloud Access: Use Signed URLs, Not Service Accounts
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We aligned on:
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Don’t give the IDE persistent cloud credentials
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Use:
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Control Plane → signed URLs → GCS
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This gives you:
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better security
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easier monetization
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easy migration later
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avoids long-term risk
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You can still have:
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Direct data transfer
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without exposing cloud identities.
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7. Product OS > Code Chat Only
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You’re not just building a “code helper chat”.
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You’re building a Product OS, where chat can:
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generate code
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deploy services
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analyze funnels
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generate campaigns
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summarize experiments
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optimize onboarding
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respond to support tickets
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That’s your differentiator over Cursor:
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Cursor is a coding assistant
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You’re building a product automation cockpit
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What This Means Practically
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You will:
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Run VSCodium
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Install:
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Your Product OS extension
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An open-source chat UI (or embed it)
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Connect it to:
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Your Control Plane
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Gemini on Vertex AI
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Add:
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Tool invocation
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Product modules (marketing, analytics, growth, etc)
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Ship:
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A Cursor-free AI IDE focused on launching and running products
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What You Avoid
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By this approach, you avoid:
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Paying Cursor per seat
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Being locked into OpenAI routing
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Forking VS Code prematurely
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Owning an editor platform too early
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Maintaining a custom compiler/distribution pipeline
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Final Position
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You do not need Cursor.
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You can build:
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A great chat interface
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With code + GCP integration
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On VSCodium
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With open-source UI
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Powered by Gemini
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And fully controlled by you
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If you’d like, next I can:
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Lay out a concrete build roadmap (V1 → V3)
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Or give you a minimal stack diagram + repo layout
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Or produce a starter technical spec for your Product OS Chat + Tooling platform |