1 min lesson
What a DE portfolio must prove
Put this lesson point into plain words: "Your portfolio has one job in this loop."
Step 1 of 2
Your portfolio has one job in this loop: prove you can take an interface from idea to shipped and from 90 to 100 yourself, in both Figma and code.
Cursor hires Design Engineers to live at the seam where design becomes production UI. The role description is explicit about it: translate Figma into pixel-perfect React/SolidJS, prototype interactions and own components end to end inside an Electron editor. A portfolio that reads like a visual designer's case-study deck misses the point. So does a GitHub of backend services with no surface anyone can feel.
The reviewer is asking a single question while you talk: would I trust this person to own the inline-diff UI or the agent panel and not embarrass us on the details? Everything you show is evidence for or against that.
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Full explanation
Full explanation
Interactive diagram. Tab through its regions; each focused region shows its detail in the panel below.
How hard the reviewer probes each signal - weight 5 is what makes or breaks the stage.
Notice what is missing from that list: ten of anything. Three deep pieces beat ten shallow ones because the reviewer probes depth and a thin piece collapses on the second question. Curate ruthlessly and cut work you cannot defend at the implementation level.
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Optional practice
Practice: What a DE portfolio must prove
QYou have ten solid projects. How many should you bring to a Cursor DE portfolio review and why?