Does AI-Assisted Coding Deliver? A Study of Cursor's Impact on Software Projects
4 days ago
- #AI-assisted coding
- #Software Engineering
- #LLM agents
- LLM agents like Cursor are claimed to significantly boost software development productivity, but empirical evidence is scarce.
- A study using difference-in-differences design compares GitHub projects using Cursor with those that do not.
- Cursor adoption leads to a large but temporary increase in development velocity.
- There is a significant and lasting increase in static analysis warnings and code complexity with Cursor use.
- Increased code complexity and static warnings contribute to long-term velocity slowdown.
- Findings have implications for practitioners, LLM assistant designers, and researchers.