1 min lesson
Success in the first 90 days
Describe what "So the question in the room is often 'what would you ship in your first 90 days'?" changes in practice.
Step 1 of 3
Cursor's team is small, flat and fast and the work-trial is the real hiring decision - so the question in the room is often "what would you ship in your first 90 days?" A strong answer is a sequence with visible output early, not a learning plan that ends in a deck.
The honest first job is becoming a power user of the whole surface, fast. You can't teach a developer to wire up the Agent SDKA programmatic interface for running Cursor agents from your own scripts, services or CI, locally or in the cloud. Press Enter for the full definition. against an 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. server if you haven't done it yourself last week. So the plan front-loads depth, then converts that depth into artifacts that travel.
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Full explanation
The First 90 Days, in Order
Interactive diagram. Step through it with the Next and Previous controls below, or Tab to a region to read its detail.
Depth first, then artifacts that travel - the verify gate runs before anything ships.
Two things make this plan land instead of sounding generic. First, the demo has a deadline measured in weeks, not a quarter - the culture rewards shipping early and iterating in public. Second, the docs work is specific: you're not promising to "improve documentation," you're committing to find gaps and verify against source.
You don't need hand-holding in a flat team.
You can produce a developer-grade artifact fast.
You treat the trial culture as the actual job.
You hold a real correctness bar.
You verify by reading source, not trusting copy.
You improve the surface, not just describe it.
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Optional practice
Practice: Success in the first 90 days
QWhy does becoming a top-1% power user of the whole surface come first in a credible 90-day plan?