Codeium pulled a Cursor on Cursor.
Six months ago Codeium was a Copilot competitor with a free tier and a quiet reputation. Then they shipped Windsurf, an entire IDE with an agent called Cascade, and the AI coding race grew a third lane overnight.
The Setup
Windsurf is a VS Code fork, similar in shape to Cursor, but the agent is the headline. Cascade reads, edits, and runs commands in a tight loop — and the UI shows you the whole reasoning chain in a panel beside your code.
@Cascade
I'm rebuilding the booking confirmation page in
src/pages/book/confirm.astro.
Goals:
- Pull the booking from Supabase using the URL token
- Show a success state with the booking details
- Send a Pipedrive event via /api/pipedrive/event
- Log to PostHog
- Mobile-first layout, match the rest of /book/*
Use the existing api wrappers in src/lib/api/*.
Run npm run typecheck before stopping.The Money Pattern
Cascade's "Flow" view is the differentiator. As the agent edits, you see file-by-file changes stream in, with a timeline you can scrub. Mid-run regret is finally easy — rewind to step 4, branch off, retry with new instructions. It's the closest any tool has come to feeling like a real pair programmer.
The autocomplete is also Codeium-level fast. They've been doing local-style inference for years, so the latency is closer to Supermaven than to Copilot.
The Catch
It's yet another IDE. If you've already settled into Cursor or VS Code with Cline, Windsurf is one more tool with its own keybinds, settings, and quirks. Switching costs are real.
The free tier is generous but capped. Hit the limit on a real refactor and you'll be on the paid plan within a week. The pricing is fair, but the "free forever" vibe is misleading.
The Verdict
Windsurf is the best agent IDE if you're starting fresh today. The Flow timeline alone is worth the switch. If you're already deep in Cursor, the upgrade isn't urgent — but if you're shopping, this is the one to try first.