1 min lesson
Models, modes and judgment
Show why this lesson detail matters. "Faster models keep you in flow and cost less per call."
Step 1 of 2
Cursor explicitly prizes the judgment to reject bad AI output and an SA who can't teach that judgment is selling autocomplete with a bigger marketing budget.
Model selection comes up in every demo and most discoveries, and the honest answer is that it's a trade-off, not a leaderboard. Faster models keep you in flow and cost less per call. More capable models reason through harder, multi-step work but cost more and run slower. Auto routes the task to a reasonable default so most developers don't have to think about it.
Capabilities, names, prices and Auto behavior change over time. Coach the trade-off framework and confirm the current lineup before quoting specifics.
Reasoning from the trade-off reads as more credible than reciting a list that may be stale by the interview.