1 min lesson
Be ready to explain your process
Take this case and make the call: "An interviewer asks how you used AI on the take-home exercise. Why is a vague answer like 'I used it to help with the writing' a risk and what does a strong answer contain?"
Step 1 of 2
Be ready to explain your process
Expect a direct question about how you used AI on the exercise. The strong answer is concrete: a specific place AI saved you time, a specific place its output was wrong or bland and you changed it and how you confirmed the facts. Vagueness here reads as either not using AI or not editing it.
I drafted the launch narrative's structure with AI to move fast, then rewrote the opening because it had that generic launch-copy smell developers tune out. I verified each product claim against the actual editor and I cut a feature line the model invented that Cursor doesn't ship.
How you use AI on the exercise is itself a demo of how you'd use Cursor. A candidate who pastes raw output is showing they'd ship unreviewed agent edits in real life. A candidate who drafts, edits and verifies is showing the exact human-in-the-loop discipline Cursor is built around. Treat the take-home as a live audition for your product judgment.
Don't overcorrect into pretending you didn't use AI. At an AI company, claiming you wrote everything by hand reads as either dishonest or out of touch. The signal they want is judgment, not abstinence: used it well, edited it hard, verified the output and can explain exactly what you did.