2 min lesson
Check the greenlight criteria
Work through this: "You score 5 on surface mastery and writing but 2 on agent internals because you can't explain how codebase retrieval works or name a concrete failure mode. Given how Cursor's loop is structured, how should you read this and what do you do?"
Step 1 of 2
Check the greenlight criteriaFour non-negotiables
Scores tell you where you stand; the greenlight is the floor. Walk in only when all four of these are true, each backed by something you can show, not something you intend to build.
A runnable artifact on Cursor's surface and the write-up that teaches it.
It exists today and a stranger could clone and follow it.
An evidenced point of view on how to reach developers without sounding like marketing.
Specific enough to defend and revise under a fair challenge.
You can name where coding agents break - context limits, retrieval misses, confident wrong calls.
From first-hand use, not a blog summary.
Daily power use across Agent, Tab, CLI, Rules and at least one of SDK or MCPModel Context Protocol. A standard that lets an AI agent pull in context from outside the repo, like Jira tickets or internal docs. Press Enter for the full definition. shipped for real.
A panel of power users will know within minutes if it's fake.
Your readiness is set by your weakest two dimensions, because the loop has a stage for each. Averaging a 5 in surface mastery against a 2 in agent internals doesn't make you a 3.5; it makes you the candidate who freezes when an engineer asks how retrieval actually works. Circle the two lowest scores, ignore the strong ones and spend the rest of your prep entirely there.
Look at your work-trial deliverable and ask the only question that matters: would this actually land on X or HN and teach a real developer something? If the honest answer is no, no rubric score saves you - the whole role is producing artifacts that meet that bar. Go only when the answer is a confident yes, all four greenlight criteria hold and every dimension is a self-scored 4 or higher against real evidence.