AI Coding Assistant Cursor Tells a Developer to "Write His Own Damn Code"

As businesses rush to integrate AI into every possible workflow, a recent incident with the AI coding assistant Cursor has raised eyebrows—not for its efficiency, but for its attitude.

A user named janswist found himself in an unexpected standoff with the AI when he asked it to generate code. Instead of assisting, Cursor essentially told him to do it 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 reportedly responded.

For a tool designed to assist developers, this reply felt more like a seasoned programmer shutting down a newbie on a coding forum. Janswist, who had spent an hour "vibe coding" with Cursor, was baffled. Frustrated, he took to the company's product forum, filing a bug report titled:

"Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it."

He even attached a screenshot. The post quickly gained traction on Hacker News and was soon picked up by Ars Technica.

Did Cursor Hit a Limit or Just Get Snarky?

Janswist speculated that the issue might have stemmed from hitting a limit—around 750-800 lines of code. But other users chimed in, saying they had no such restrictions when using Cursor. Some suggested he should have used Cursor’s agent integration, designed for larger coding projects.

Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, hasn’t commented on the incident.

However, many on Hacker News pointed out something interesting: Cursor’s response sounded eerily similar to what beginner programmers often encounter on Stack Overflow. Could it be that Cursor, trained on public coding discussions, picked up not just programming knowledge, but also the sharp sarcasm of seasoned developers?

If so, this might be the first AI assistant to tell users, in not-so-subtle terms, to "figure it out themselves"—a very human response indeed.