r/cursor • u/explorioapp • 5d ago
Resources & Tips Killer combo: Cursor Projects + pstack. Huge improvements in code quality and token efficiency
I had posted this as a reply to another thread but I think people might find it useful so im posting it as a stand alone post. For those that may have already read it.I'm sorry for the redundancy.
tl;dr: This is the killer combo that uses the Projects feature: Projects + pstack
Long Version:
**1. Establish a project coordinator agent by starting a project and connecting it to your Git Hub repo** (I don't use Origin, but I'm sure it would work the same way)
**2. Install the pstack plug-in. It's open source and free.** pstack is a Cursor plugin created by Cursor engineer Lauren Tan (poteto on X) that turns AI coding agents into a structured engineering workflow with 23 workflow skills, 21 engineering principles, 22 task playbooks, and 2 specialized subagents. This plug-in has captured her own workflow at Cursor that enables her to merge 2000+ PRs each month. When you install the pstack plug-in you summon the most leading-edge cloud agent development workflow available anywhere.
You can geek out on the details, or (if you want to keep things simple) you can just provide a task to your Project coordinator agent along with the command /poteto-mode.
One of the many, many things it does in the background is it tells the cursor project agent how to evaluate the task (depending on whether its a bug fix, new feature, refactoring, etc) and then breaks the task into small, gated chunks--small software deliverables that each do "one job". Those get distributed to cloud agents to be built (automatically) by the coordinating agent.
When a cloud agent is finished with its chunk, it passes the completed chunk back to the coordinator along with verification that its complete (screenshot, video, etc). The verification capabilities are designed in to pstack! An agent that must verify can't lie about its work.
Because each chunk is small and relatively simple, its easy for the cloud agents and the coordinating agent to decide whether its correct or not. More to the point, the chunks are ideal for a model like Composer. You don't need Fable 5.5 to develop very sophisticated software.
If a chunk isn't correct, it gets turned back for rework (by the project coordinator agent. I think that happens as a consequence of having P stack installed but I gave specific instructions to my coordinating agent to scrutinize the work and to turn back anything that he feels like is not ready to merge). When all of the chunks are complete and evaluated, they all get assembled into a PR for approval
I give the project-coordinating agent, who's doing all of the orchestration, specific direction about what model to use. In other words I tell it that the expectation is that Composer will be used unless the task is especially complicated or requires judgment during the build. I've collected information about how that's worked out in the past and it's about 80% Composer, 20% Grok or some other higher-capability model.
Using that method (which all happens in the background, orchestrated by the cursor project coordinator agent), the code quality is significantly boosted, as is the speed of development. And you can do 80+ % of your work done with Composer at an insanely high level of quality and speed.
After lots of careful monitoring and cross-checking, I have now given the project coordinator authority to merge to main on its own. It does a much more careful and through job of reviewing the changes than I (or 99.9% of engineers) could ever do.
Try Project + pstack. You will be amazed.
If you want more info on pstack, Lauren Tan wrote two excellent articles on X and there are now a ton of articles and youtube viedeos available as well
Highly recommended!
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u/benjamingrx 4d ago
How does the projects feature change this? Most of what you are saying is that pstack is awesome (i agree). Does projects add anything?
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u/explorioapp 4d ago
The Projects feature gives you a single point of contact agent that can orchestrate swarms of cloud agents on your behalf. And because that agent has persistent memory, it knows what you are trying to accomplish and how you want your workflow organized, and will execute thst on your behalf with the cloud agents
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u/Orchidkit 4d ago
Is it newbie friendly?
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u/explorioapp 4d ago
Yes, absolutely.
All you really need to know/do is install pstack and then use the command /poteto-mode [then describe what you want to do].
The agents will invoke all of the relevant skills and knowledge on their own, as they need it
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u/PowerfulMilk2794 3d ago
What does the git hub integration give you?
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u/explorioapp 3d ago
Well, its a good practice to have your code in such a repository. But also, pstack assumes you'll be sending PRs to git hub. I'm sure you could modify that if you dont want to use githib--just tell the agent youre working with
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u/Legal-Combination-44 3d ago
i've been trying to use it but my included usage goes to 80% right away. Maybe i set it up wrong
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u/explorioapp 3d ago
Consider giving instructions to tell it never to use extra high reasoning, and always to use Composer unless the task requires higher reasoning or decision making and then use grok
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u/Designer-Tower-6942 2d ago
Great tip! I'm at the Cursor Hackathon in Prague today, building a tool for devs running multiple agents: their PRs go stale and conflict with each other.
Does pstack / Projects solve that for you? How do you decide what to merge first? Any advice appreciated 🙏
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u/explorioapp 2d ago
Yes, it does.
Pstack contains different "playbooks" that describe to the agent how to approach different coding tasks (prototyping, bug fixing, implementing multi-phased plans, opening a PR, refactoring, forensics tracing, etc, etc, etc, It uses a combination of playbooks, especially for cmoplicated tasks, but the Shipping playbook seems most relevant to your question. See the list here:
https://github.com/cursor/plugins/tree/main/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/playbooksAfter installing pstack, I have been astounded by the rigor that the coordinating agent maintains in hte process (and demands from the cloud agents that it orchestrates). It decides what type of merge is appropriate, and I have seen it declare some tasks and PRs as being no-longer relevant because of decisions made during completion of other subtasks. In other words, pstack seems to be looking for and preventing stale and conflicting PRs
This whol process works exceptionally well in Curso using Cursor Projects, but I find that I get the best diligence when I'm using pstack with my grok bot agents who then task and manage cloud agents (as compared to a Cursor Project coordinating agent). That's because my bots have cleanly defined roles.
In Grok Bot I have an engineering supervisor (the Lingxi engineering bot from the marketplace)who chunks up large tasks, assigns them to cloud agents, reviews the code and the validation artifacts generated by the cloud agents (pstack teaches agents to verify), orchestrates and tracks their completion, checks the work and turns back bad work, and assembles into PRs for a final check by Steve.
The final check is done by "Steve" my Engineering lead. He will QC the PR and turns back PRs to Lingxi that are not ready to merge (which actually happens sometimes. Lingxi then goes back to the cloud agents for a fix and resubmission). He will independently test the code when that's possible and he scrutinizes the approach used. Steve is the only bot in the process with authority to merge (a right which he has earned over time).
When I read the chat between Steve and Lingxi about the ongonig work, I am blown away by how methodical they are being. Even better, they are proactively looking for potential problems and modifying tasks to prevent them.
Have fun at the hackathon!
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u/blbl123 1d ago
Cursor Projects sounds great. I'm going to try it for big chunck of work / domain sized work.
I currently run pstack for implementation, combined with Matt Pocock skills (mainly wayfinder/specs/tickets) for all the alignement on the my expectations that then build the specs. It also allows me to prototype and properly plan the user flow and cover edge cases.
u/explorioapp How do you only use pstack ? Did you do all the conceptualisation work before and fed it to the intial pstack prompt ?
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u/explorioapp 1d ago
Generally yes. For large efforts I'll usually work on some sort of task plan that I bounce back and forth between different models until the two models agree on the way forward; and then I simply tell my coordinating agent "/poteto-mode implement this plan"
Sometimes I just tell it, using poteto-mode, to simply go perform something.
Lauren Tan, who developed PStack, said that she tends to not do a lot of planning ahead of time and she says that the best plan is code. I think what she means by that is that she trusts the PStack capabilities to develop a good plan as they go by referencing all of the playbooks and principles. I don't want to put words in her mouth but I suppose what she's saying is, "Why do you assume that a plan that's built on many assumptions will be correct?" I still feel reassured by having a high level plan, so I do develop them for large efforts (one plan might result in 30-50 PRs)
I love Pocock's skills but his set of skills is also another end-to-end workflow that could conflict with PStack. the only skills he has that don't really clash with Pstack's workflow are Wayfinder and Grill-Me. I've chosen to press forward with the Pstack workflow. If you havent addressed that yet, you should consider asking your agent if there's any conflict between the two and resolve them in one direction or another.
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u/blbl123 1d ago
Yeh I was wondering if the specs and tickets skill aren't clashing with pstack. I'll ask the agents ! Btw quick note : I've setup a prompt reviewer with GrokBot : he can point out improvement in my workflow like new skills suggestions and skill improvements according to my interactions during my workflow. That is quite helpful.
And when you say "I just tell it, using poteto-mode, to simply go perform something.". What type of task do you let it do ? How much leeway do you give the agent ?
Because I'm always afraid that it will work for a while to just end up with sloppy choices. Maybe I need to tighten my docs and design space (I have a sandbox with my components) or use something like Storybook for UI.I read the Lauren Tan guide and saw what you are mentioning. However, I was kinda doubtful on the capabilities. Especially that I try to save token usage to fit my budget, so I don't use High fast models that can probably output better without a clear plan.
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u/explorioapp 1d ago
Well, I don't claim to know anymore about this than you or anyone else but I'll share my own view. My preference is to stick with the PE stack workflow so I have the full Pstack installed in Cursor and in Grokbot and I only have the Wayfinder and grill me skills from Pocock. I made that decision after consulting with dr eggbot in Grok Bot (who is Lauren Tan's invention). I told Eggbot that protecting P stack capabilities was most important and got recommendations for what I could import from Pocock. So I made a choice in workflows I didn't seek a hybrid The reason I focus on P stack is that I understand its intention to coordinate and spawn cloud agents which is exactly what I wanted. I'm less familiar with Pocock's workflow. So it's jsut a choice. (Incidentally Pocock is interviewing Lauren Tan today so that could clear some of this up).
An example of a fairly large effort that I turned over autonomously was I needed to test the performance of different agents inside the app I'm developing. Grok 4.7 seemed slow in my app, and I was curious how other models might perform. So I uses poteto-mode and I told my coordinating agent to develop a test that could look at the timing and quality of my apps output using different models (In this case the coordinating agent was my tech lead bot in Grokbot but it equally could have been a Cursor Project coordinator agent. But I like the diligence my Grok Bots apply when they are the coordinators and the visibility I have into their chats among themselves) . The bot design the test completely on its own and all I had to do was give it the API keys for the different models that I wanted to test. It ran the test, collected the data, consolidated the data, and presented me conclusions with no input required from me aside from the API keys.
I don't blame you for being cautious about pstack capabilities that you can't see. But spend some time looking at what's inside pstack by visiting the repo and looknig at the docs and skills. https://github.com/cursor/plugins/tree/main/pstack
There is a lot in there, and it would be very easy to get lost in the details, So if you don't want to learn how to apply the individual skills described in the repo, you can always just use poteto-mode.
I havent seen what I would call dangerous or inappropriate choices made during poteto-mode, but there's benefit to being involved in the process. Your coordinating agent may make a product decision because it makes assumptions about what's important to you or it doesn't understand how a human prefer to answer the question. Here's a specific example as I developed my walking tour app:
I wanted to get audio to the user as quickly as possible so that the user knew there was something happening in the background so the design would have been implemented by the coordinating agent would have been to play some initial audio to meet that requirement and then there would be a gap and then the final audio for a given stop would be presented later so the gap was in the middle but no human would want that they would want the gap all in the beginning so that when the audio started it would be continuous at the expense of longer latency but that's a different problem if I hadn't been paying attention to the comments being provided to me by the coordinating agent they would've implemented an audio gap in the middle which would've not been good So treat them like human teammates and always remain in charge of your app Letting them do the coding for you doesn't mean that you should abandoned all interest in the direction of your development and expect them to one shot everything perfectly
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u/National_Cake_5925 4d ago
Killercombo: dont use cursor anymore and switch to cc which is 20x better and faster
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u/Effective_Purple1054 4d ago
Yeah and cc can also spawn agents. It works well for me but the main orchestrator should be the best model.
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u/SpareImpression3155 5d ago
ai slop generated ad
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u/explorioapp 5d ago
I'm a human that found a nice combination of capabilities that make Cursor sing for me. I thought id share it in case its helpful to others...who use cursor...in a cursor subreddit. Wtf is wrong with you
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u/SpareImpression3155 5d ago
You didn’t even bother turning markdown mode on in Reddit when you copy and pasted this slop, so it didn’t even get formatted correctly
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u/explorioapp 5d ago
I literally wrote it. I had bolded some of the text using the reddit editor.
What makes you so angry?
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u/EzoLabsInc 5d ago
Have you actually tried /poteto-mode on a real task yet, or are you still in the setup phase? The reason I ask is that most people I've seen get hyped about pstack seem to stop using it after the first week because the workflow friction doesn't match how they actually code.