1 min lesson
Timed mini build-on-a-codebase
Put this idea into your own words: "The onsite grades the build and the presentation."
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The real decision round is the famous 8-hour paid onsite: a frozen copy of Cursor's own codebase, a deliberately vague prompt and a question underneath it - can you go end-to-end and what would you invent in a vacuum.
You can't get the paycheck or the exact repo. You can replicate the shape. Clone an open-source editor or AI-dev project you've never touched, write yourself a fuzzy brief and box it to 3–4 hours. The constraint that matters is unfamiliar code plus an ambiguous ask under a hard clock.
The onsite grades the build and the presentation. A scrappier feature defended with sharp tradeoff and eval reasoning beats a polished feature presented as a shrug. Rehearse the five-minute talk as seriously as the code, because in the real round AI and Slack questions are allowed - they're watching how you scope and decide, not whether you can type.
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Full explanation
The 3–4 hour protocol
The 3–4 hour protocolRun it like the real thing
Interactive diagram. Step through it with the Next and Previous controls below, or Tab to a region to read its detail.
Verify is a hard gate - never present a slice you haven't run on a real input.
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Optional practice