1 min lesson
The workspace defines what the AI can see
Describe what "Knowing this turns a lot of 'the AI can't see X' tickets into a one-line answer about scope" changes in practice.
Step 1 of 2
The workspace defines what the AI can see
The folder you open is the workspace and it sets the entire domain the AI can reason over. A user who opens only their frontend repo and asks "what happens when I click this button" gets back only the frontend piece. The same question against a workspace that holds the frontend, the backend and its docs traces the click all the way through to where the data persists. Knowing this turns a lot of "the AI can't see X" tickets into a one-line answer about scope.
Tactic to recommend for end-to-end debugging: make one empty parent folder, git clone each related repo into it, then open the parent as the workspace. Cursor now adds context across repositories instead of seeing one in isolation.
If you have your backend docs and your front-end repos all in one workspace, what you're doing is enhancing Cursor's ability to add context between those different repositories.
Don't tell a user "that's a VS Code problem, not ours" and close the ticket. The lineage is your diagnostic tool, not a deflection.
Cursor's job is to resolve the user's problem regardless of which half it lives in. Use the fork to find the fix faster, then own the resolution.
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Optional practice
Practice: The workspace defines what the AI can see
QA user says: "After I switched profiles, all my keybindings and theme reset and now my Python linter doesn't run." Which half of the architecture is this and what does that tell you about the fix?