1 min lesson
Which workflow to coach first - the canonical sequence
Use "Which workflow to coach first" to say what a strong answer must include.
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Which workflow to coach first - the canonical sequencethe order Cursor's own team teaches
Beyond the value/safety quadrant, there's a teachable order that mirrors how experienced Cursor users actually work. Coach it in this sequence and a skeptic builds trust before they ever let the agent write production code.
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Full explanation
Plan mode is the single move that converts a careful engineer
On entering a codebase, use Ask modeA read-only mode for asking questions about a codebase without changing files; the safe way to explore unfamiliar or legacy code. Press Enter for the full definition. - it makes no file changes; you "have a conversation with your codebase."
Canonical onboarding prompt: "explain this repo, use diagrams where appropriate."
Especially valuable for less-technical people and legacy repos - the lowest-risk first move.
The #1 workshop recommendation: Plan modeA mode that makes no edits: it researches the codebase and produces an editable plan you review before any code changes. Press Enter for the full definition. makes no edits - it researches the indexed codebase, follows existing paradigms, asks clarifying questions and outputs a hyperlinked Markdown plan.
Editing the plan costs zero tokens; teammates can sign off before execution.
Generate the plan with a thinking modelA reasoning model (shown with a brain icon in Cursor's picker) that spends extra compute before answering; reach for it on complex, nuanced work and a standard model for fast, simple tasks. Press Enter for the full definition., then execute cheap - that's where the token efficiency comes from.
Cursor's engineers run a de-slop skillA shared Cursor skill that strips typical AI-generated tells (filler comments, vague names, over-engineering) and applies house style. Press Enter for the full definition. at generation time, before code reaches a PR.
It removes typical AI slop - generic names, verbose comments, over-engineering, unnecessary abstraction - and standardizes style.
It's published on Cursor's public marketplace; point teams to it as the reusable quality pass.
Coach engineers to do work with local agents until a workflow gets repetitive, then convert it to an automation.
People have a blind spot for what's automatable - someone did a daily Slack update by hand for weeks before automating it.
The data-backed first automation to recommend: "Summarize Changes Daily" (89% retention).
Plan modeA mode that makes no edits: it researches the codebase and produces an editable plan you review before any code changes. Press Enter for the full definition. reframes clarifying questions as a feature, not friction: it pauses on contradictions - in one war story a PRDProduct Requirements Document. The spec describing what to build, for whom and why, before implementation starts. Increasingly the artifact you hand an AI agent as the source of truth for a feature. Press Enter for the full definition. said "use authenticated users" but the agent saw no auth in the app and asked how to handle the gap. A careful senior engineer trusts a tool that surfaces a discrepancy before writing code far more than one that charges ahead. Coach plan-first and you've given the skeptic a reviewable, editable, zero-token-to-edit artifact to push back on - exactly the control they want.