What an IDE is
An IDE — Integrated Development Environment — is the application a developer opens to read, write, and navigate source code. It is not a website you log into. It runs on the developer's computer and opens the project's files directly.
Cursor is the specific IDE used for this project. It is built directly on top of VS Code — the most widely used code editor in the industry — which means the same keyboard shortcuts, file explorer, split-pane layout, and extension model millions of developers already know. The codebase it opens is plain text files in folders: readable by any editor, stored in Git, and fully portable.
Key capabilities
Built on VS Code
Standardised on the most-used code editor in the industry. Every VS Code shortcut, theme, and compatible extension works out of the box. Any developer familiar with VS Code is immediately productive.
AI built into the editor
Suggestions, refactors, and code generation happen in context — inside the file, next to the code — not in a separate chat window disconnected from the repo. The AI sees the full project structure.
Integrated terminal & Git
Run build commands, push to GitHub, and review diffs without leaving the editor. The full development loop — write, test, commit, push — stays in one window.
Plain files, fully portable
The project is text files in folders — readable by any editor, stored in Git, and fully portable. No proprietary database, no locked-in format.
VS Code compatibility — why it matters
Because Cursor is VS Code at its core, it is not a proprietary black box. Settings, themes, and most VS Code extensions transfer directly. If the project ever moved to a different developer, they could open the same repository in VS Code, WebStorm, or any editor — nothing about the project is coupled to Cursor specifically.
That portability is part of what the stack is designed for: the code is the asset, not the tool used to write it.
This is not WordPress — and that matters
Cursor does not install WordPress plugins, themes, or a database. The public site does not "run inside" Cursor. Cursor is the workshop where the developer edits the codebase before changes are committed to Git and deployed to the host in part 3.
There is no plugin marketplace in the WordPress sense. Capabilities are added as explicit code dependencies, environment variables, or new files in the repository — all readable, auditable, and version-controlled. Nothing is bolted on silently.