# Cursor and editor-first tools Course: Which AI Coding Tool? — https://zero2vibecode.com/learn/ai-coding-tools Canonical URL: https://zero2vibecode.com/learn/ai-coding-tools/1-3-cursor-and-editor-first-tools Editor-first tools put the agent where the code already is. That trade buys visual context and costs reach. Not everyone wants to work in a terminal. Editor-first tools put the agent inside the place you already read code. ## What you get **Changes in place.** The edit appears in the file, in context, with the surrounding code visible. For reviewing a subtle change, that is genuinely better than reading a diff in a terminal. **Familiar ground.** If you already live in an editor, there is almost no new surface to learn. The agent is a panel next to code you already know how to navigate. **Fine-grained control.** Accept this hunk, reject that one, tweak the third by hand. The granularity is natural in an editor and awkward in a terminal. ## What you give up **Reach.** Running the test suite, checking out a branch, inspecting a log, deploying — those live in the terminal. An editor-bound agent can suggest the command, but it is not the one running it and reading the result. **Composition.** Terminal agents chain with everything else in the terminal, because that is what a terminal is for. ## Where Grok and Kimi fit Both are model families with coding-capable offerings, and both show up in this conversation for a specific reason: cost and availability. If a frontier tool is out of budget or unavailable where you are, a cheaper or more open alternative is not a compromise — it is the difference between learning this skill and not. The workflow does not change. You still give context, review a diff, iterate. What changes is how much correction you do per task, and that is worth measuring for yourself rather than taking anyone's word for. **The point of this whole course.** Every tool here is the same shape. Learn the shape — give context, ask for a plan, read the diff, iterate — and the specific tool becomes a detail you can change in an afternoon. ## What to do now Pick one and use it on real work for two weeks. If you have no strong preference, the Claude Code course on this site takes you from install to a shipped project, and everything you learn there transfers.