2 min lesson
Prototype-with-AI as a core skill
Connect "The prototype is not a mockup someone else codes later" to the decision you would make.
Step 1 of 2
Cursor's PM job description says it plainly: you build the first version of a feature yourself, get it in front of users and iterate. The prototype is not a mockup someone else codes later. It is the artifact you hand to engineering.
This reframes the whole role. At a company with no traditional PMs and no project managers, a spec that ends at a Figma file is half a deliverable. The bar is a thin slice a real user can click, running on a stack you can deploy without fumbling. Most of your interview prep for this role is reps at exactly that.
Cursor's growth team has a phrase for the shift: deliver demos, not memosThe shift from writing a text spec to building a live, clickable prototype to convey product intent; what gets cheap to make moves the leverage to vision and taste. Press Enter for the full definition.. The build step is collapsing, so the opportunity moves to expressing product vision concretely and fast - a live, clickable prototype you hand to engineers and designers instead of a text 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. they have to imagine.
Deliver demos, not memosThe shift from writing a text spec to building a live, clickable prototype to convey product intent; what gets cheap to make moves the leverage to vision and taste. Press Enter for the full definition..
The onsite small project is where this gets tested live. Treat it as a prototype-with-AI exercise even if the prompt is written as a spec, because that is how the team actually works.
Cursor's growth team is blunt about why a live build beats a static mock: a URL to a clickable demo communicates an idea more directly than a text 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. or a flat screen. Don't abandon written specs, but lean toward the shareable running thing - deploy it to an internal system or Vercel and send the link.