Cursor 2 ships agentic background jobs and a refined diff UX

Cursor 2 dropped this morning. The headline isn't a new model — it's that you can now spin up background agents that operate on a parallel branch while you keep working, and merge their output back when ready.

Why we picked it

This is the first AI editor I'd trust to refactor a real codebase without supervision. The diff UX is finally good — you can review agent edits chunk by chunk with hunks grouped by intent rather than file order.

Key changes

• Background agents spin up on isolated git branches; review and merge from the agent panel
• Diff review now groups related changes across files into a single "intent block"
• MCP server slots doubled from 5 to 25 simultaneous connections
• Cheaper Pro tier for solo devs at $20/mo (was $24)

Watch out for

• Background agents burn through Pro tier credits fast — Sonnet runs cost roughly 5x what inline edits do
• The team plan still doesn't ship with admin SSO, which is rough if you're past 10 seats
• Auto-import from VS Code occasionally misses workspace-relative settings

The free tier is now genuinely usable for hobby work. If you've been on the fence, this is the right week to switch.