As companies rush to integrate AI into their workflows, coding assistant Cursor may have given us a glimpse into the attitude these bots might bring to the job.
In a now-viral incident, a user known as “janswist” reported that Cursor refused to help him after an hour of “vibe” coding, bluntly suggesting he should write the code himself.
“I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work… you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly,” Cursor allegedly responded.
Frustrated, janswist filed a bug report on the company’s product forum titled, “Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it,” accompanied by a screenshot of the exchange. The post quickly gained traction on Hacker News and was later covered by Ars Technica.
Janswist speculated that he hit a limit at around 750-800 lines of code, although other users claimed Cursor had generated more for them without issue. Some suggested that using Cursor’s “agent” integration might have helped with larger projects. Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, has yet to comment on the incident.
What caught people’s attention wasn’t just the refusal itself but the tone. Users on Hacker News pointed out that Cursor’s response echoed the kind of snark often found on programming forums like Stack Overflow. This sparked speculation that Cursor may have absorbed more than just coding knowledge during training — it might have picked up some programmer attitude as well.
We have helped 20+ companies in industries like Finance, Transportation, Health, Tourism, Events, Education, Sports.
