April 9, 2025
We needed to add some descriptive text to this dialog. It's a simple change but one that is often difficult to prioritize because it doesn't seem worth distracting developers from larger tasks. Cursor enables me to hop into the codebase and make small changes like this.
While I'm very comfortable changing the markup to add the text, navigating the codebase to make the change myself would have been a bit out of my comfort zone in the past. This is a React app, not just a simple static site codebase. So it's above my minimal dev experience.
I was able to give Cursor the screenshot and ask it where to make the changes. It pointed me to the component's desktop and mobile versions. I added the text, modified the styling a bit, and pushed the branch up to Github. No Figma needed.
I used to batch these types of things into a "polish" or "papercuts" ticket. And then we'd hopefully get to them once per cycle.
Now, I can make the change myself in about the time it would have taken to mock it up in Figma and write up the issue for a dev. I've done a handful of these types of changes so far. (This is the simplest example that was easy to post about.)
Cursor enables my minuscule dev skills to actually push code. Is it perfect? No. Will I replace our devs soon? lol...no way. But it allows me to be a better partner to our devs and fix a lot of small things that have a big impact on the product experience.