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Foundations: the lens you carry all week1 / 3

2 min lesson

Reference customer - Northstar Financial

Talk this through in your own words: "At Northstar, which existing tools are enforcing separation of duties and what is Cursor's correct role relative to them?" Finish with the next move.

Step 1 of 3

Keep one reference account in your head all week, so every abstract point has a concrete home. Northstar Financial is our running example: a 200-engineer fintech, SOXSarbanes-Oxley Act. A US law that forces companies to keep auditable controls over any system that affects their financial reporting. Press Enter for the full definition.-relevant, running the kind of messy large-company stack you'll actually meet. Each time you learn a concept, ask 'how would I say this to Northstar?'

Northstar Financial - the profile
Engineers
~200
Codebase
Java monolith + TypeScript services + Terraform (IaCInfrastructure as Code. Managing servers and cloud resources through version-controlled config files (e.g. Terraform). Press Enter for the full definition.)
SCM / tickets / CI
GitHub Enterprise · Jira · Jenkins
Artifacts / runtime / flags
Artifactory · Kubernetes · LaunchDarkly
Observability / ITSM
Datadog · ServiceNow
Compliance posture
SOXSarbanes-Oxley Act. A US law that forces companies to keep auditable controls over any system that affects their financial reporting. Press Enter for the full definition.-relevant; 5 environments; formal CABChange Advisory Board. A group that reviews and signs off on higher-risk production changes before they ship. Press Enter for the full definition. (Change Advisory Board)

Map that stack onto the five layers and the conversation organizes itself.

Northstar's stack on the five layers

Interactive diagram. Tab through its regions; each focused region shows its detail in the panel below.

diagram: stack-map

Hover any layer to see where Cursor lands at Northstar. The control plane is the one to read carefully - Cursor leaves those gates exactly where they are.