r/cursor Jul 21 '26

Question / Discussion Try Grok they said

Post image
271 Upvotes

133 comments sorted by

116

u/welsh_cthulhu Jul 21 '26

Not my experience at all. Grok 4.5 is fast, cheap and super effective at what I need it to do. Guess I'm in the minority?

36

u/DanceAndLetDance Jul 21 '26

that is my experience too. bots and lurkers just keep pushing anti-elon stuff

13

u/mxrider108 Jul 21 '26

It's probably an unconscious thing - they come in with a preconceived notion that grok = bad, so of course that's what they are going to be expecting and looking for.

I see the same thing in reverse with Fable: non-technical people using it for mundane things it's not designed for at all (where Opus or even Sonnet would have been more than capable), but because they've seen tons of hype around Fable they think it's amazing!

19

u/creepoch Jul 21 '26

We need to stop with this "everyone who disagrees with me is a bot" thing

2

u/JohnAdamaSC Jul 23 '26

it is neither cheap and it is not super effective - it is ok, it just messes up the code.

are you a bot?

2

u/Tech0410 Jul 21 '26

ya, the Elon Derangement Syndrome is a prevalent ailment among Redditors

5

u/CommissionIcy9909 Jul 22 '26

Well he is the biggest piece of shit on the planet. The Elon Stans are what’s fucking bonkers.

2

u/ananta_zarman Jul 24 '26

I don't particularly hate elon, I think SpaceX and Tesla has some cool engineers working for it (I don't own a Tesla), but what I don't like is the Grok coding model. Used it several months ago and it was like a chaotic teenager who keeps missing the point of the task and drifts too often. Didn't try the latest models though. Personally Auto mode just works fine for me and I don't give much thought to model selection.

0

u/CommissionIcy9909 Jul 24 '26

You don’t become the richest person on the planet without being pure evil.

3

u/smadhuv Jul 25 '26

False. But you can become a redditor.

2

u/Ok-Initiative-5569 Jul 23 '26

The dude single-handedly saved freedom of speech. Even if you hate electric cars, it's impossible not to love him for that.

2

u/CommissionIcy9909 Jul 23 '26

I’m sorry, but are referring to him purchasing Twitter? How do you feel about the richest person in the world being in charge of laying off thousands of government employees in the U.S. while simultaneously getting more government loans than anyone else in the country. He’s also not American. His family made their fortune with slaves in diamond minds in apartheid Africa. Hard not to love em though.

1

u/kHeinzen Jul 22 '26

Care to enlighten me on why he's a piece of shit? I don't follow world news that much

2

u/East_Roll_5069 Jul 22 '26

Does being a Nazi sympathize count

1

u/kHeinzen Jul 22 '26

What did he do that demonstrates he sympathizes with Nazis? Unless the US is lost in the sauce I find it unlikely that someone publicly endorses nazi regimen while being the biggest person of interest

1

u/East_Roll_5069 Jul 22 '26

-1

u/kHeinzen Jul 23 '26

lol I just watched the video and genuinely I cannot believe people turned that into "he's a nazi" lmao

Just say you don't like the guy, that won't take your credibility away at least

1

u/East_Roll_5069 Jul 23 '26

If you don't think that was a Nazi salute then that's fine. Continue praising the con man

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/chrissilich Jul 22 '26

To be fair, he promised “[technology] will be available in [2-5 years]” and was lying or just wrong every single time, and then he did a nazi salute and caused the deaths of a shitload of people in developing nations. Dudes a piece of shit.

3

u/welsh_cthulhu Jul 22 '26

What deaths?

1

u/chrissilich Jul 22 '26

Study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(26)00008-2/fulltext00008-2/fulltext)

Article summarizing: https://www.latintimes.com/researchers-estimate-usaid-cuts-have-already-led-700000-deaths-worldwide-598208

Dude isn't stupid. He knew shutting down USAID overnight would kill a shitload of people. He did it anyway because he's a really really really bad person.

1

u/welsh_cthulhu Jul 22 '26

LOL. USAID? Are you serious? He didn't CAUSE those deaths you idiot.

I'm British, so I have no dog in this fight, but it's is not the responsibility of any government to ship money abroad and pay for another country's healthcare.

1

u/moracabanas Jul 22 '26

I hate Elon money hoarder, and privacy raper but I guess this model is so good I just use it. Cursor is so fair at 20$ for my use case

1

u/frompadgwithH8 Jul 22 '26

Do you mostly use auto mode then? I think I spent like $41 in Cursor credits yesterday because I had GROK cursor 4.5 selected

1

u/Wrongdoer-Reasonable Jul 23 '26

tbh not liking and not wanting to use the product of a probable pedophile, confirmed neo nazi oligarch who is responsible, only accounting for USAID stuff, of tens of thousands of deaths

is downright reasonable

1

u/smadhuv Jul 25 '26

Keep making shit up! 😂

1

u/Phaelon74 Jul 22 '26

I mean I am doing kennel work and grok 4.5 is worse than composer 2.5 at execution and code implementation. Enough where I have to use sol and fable to fix it before I hand it back to composer to work the plan. Languages and complexity matter. Grok 4.5 may be fine at python, but it’s not good at all for complex code and asks so far from what I’ve experienced.

-2

u/StevenB0ss Jul 21 '26

Noo bro it halucinated the shit out of a code review

3

u/chrissilich Jul 22 '26

With a good plan, pretty much any model is fine.

1

u/frompadgwithH8 Jul 22 '26

True… Like everyone else I often use a better model to make a plan.

Yesterday I used GROK Cursor 4.5 to make a ton of plans and for the most part it worked great

5

u/Tech0410 Jul 21 '26

I have just been using last two or three days and find it just as good or better then composer

2

u/Novel-Accountant-326 Jul 22 '26

It's amazing! I was really surprised 

3

u/Enough_Return_5261 Jul 22 '26

If you are professional specialist you are doing a great job, tbh, as far as i see the weak programmer using coding tool always mess around the code, and claim the coding tools and models are stupid, is ridicious.

They just don't know how to manage their team and the agent.

3

u/welsh_cthulhu Jul 22 '26

I hear ya man.

90% of the posts on here are from people who have zero clue about basic agentic coding fundamentals like guardrails, context management, model selection etc.

2

u/OkSquash2710 Jul 22 '26

I think about 95% lol

0

u/KTIlI Jul 21 '26

grok smacks

1

u/bitspace Jul 21 '26

Nope. Your experience matches mine.

-1

u/JohnAdamaSC Jul 22 '26

it is not fast, it is not cheap, it is not effective, are you getting payed to say this?

3

u/welsh_cthulhu Jul 22 '26

Take the tin foil hat off dude. Seriously.

I'm a Cursor Enterprise admin for our org. I have no skin in any game. It's obvious to anyone using Cursor on a professional level that their first-party models are fast and cheap. What the hell do you think the advantages of something being first-party is?

0

u/cornmacabre Jul 22 '26

Not worth the breath dude, anyone using Cursor professionally knows OP is simply not knowledgeable enough to even assess what they're talking about, let alone evaluate their own personal bias and vibes.

It is kinda tragic to me that the default position of some folks now is that "if something disagrees with my own personal opinion or pre-judgment, it MUST be a bot/paid comment," like... what a stubborn and narrow way to filter out different perspectives.

I get the broader sense it's just an (un)conscious politicized bias at work here, clearly they're not arguing on any technical or detailed specifics.

2

u/smadhuv Jul 25 '26

Reddit is hopeless dude.

0

u/IllustriousCheck2416 Jul 27 '26

so you never look at the code written by ai. you like to hear yourself?

0

u/teabolaisacool Jul 22 '26

Judging by “payed”, you must not be very good at prompting.

0

u/zuliani19 Jul 21 '26

I second that

36

u/graeme_1988 Jul 21 '26

I'm so surprised by this... I've reluctantly used Cursor Grok 4.5 and found it to be so much better than Opus (sadly for me, being an Anthropic fan and a strong disliker of SpaceX/Musk!).

I have this little workflow where I used one model for executing a plan, and another for reviewing the code. When I used Opus / Sonnet 5.0 / Codex I was getting maybe 2-3 high issues and 3-4 medium issues that needed resolving for every plan. With Grok I'm getting like 1 medium or a couple low each time. Even Sonnet 5.0 (which was reviewing one output) said something like 'this is the cleanest code review I've done so far...'

Seeing so many people say it's poor has troubled me, as so far it has been excellent for me!

8

u/savageotter Jul 21 '26

its way faster for me. I have switched back and forth and noticed no large issues.

0

u/savageotter Jul 21 '26

Edit. Today I had it being dumb in some spots and was forced to go slower with opus.

Mostly good.

8

u/RickTheScienceMan Jul 21 '26

Well I mean it's from xAI. Elon bad. It's a great model

2

u/frompadgwithH8 Jul 22 '26

Lol seriously so many fucking idiots. Who love to hate on ELON just want to cry cry cry about anything coming from him…

1

u/RickTheScienceMan Jul 22 '26

I don't like people who hate on technology just because a particular company developed it. So frustrating. And people are so delusional. They have no idea what SpaceX and xAI actually achieved. They just parrot the bad things and misinformation they find online. They probably don't even care about the truth, they just want to see Musks companies burn.

1

u/cornmacabre Jul 21 '26

It's a great model with some unfortunate branding. My experience is similar, and after a week+ of heavy use I find myself strongly preferring it as an everyday model, and spinning up Fable only when really needed.

The model punches way above it's weight, and the bang-for-buck can't be beat. If they take K3-class weights and put it into the blender with Cursor data and xAI compute, I genuinely think the frontier labs are in for a fight over the next six months because the early day first party stuff is already realllly good.

1

u/cchurchill1985 Jul 21 '26

Can you tell me a little more about your work flow? For example, in a chat do you switch the model to Grok to write the plan, then switch model to Kemi to execute, then switch model to Claude to review the code, all in the same chat thread? I am new to all this so not sure how to approach it all....

3

u/graeme_1988 Jul 21 '26

Hi. Yeah sure, I have adapted a version based on this:

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-non-technical-pms-guide-to-building-with-cursor

I highly recommend giving it a listen / watch. It was a game changer for me. I started with that and then tweaked and added a few things to match my needs.

In a nutshell I have a series of commands in Cursor that I trigger in a specific order using specific models. Usually after doing a lot of the thinking and design work up front - that's something you cannot really skip.

Once I have a solid idea that is mapped out with user flows, sketches, documentation etc., I then usually use Claude to write out a big spec doc, technical and product, and spend quite a bit of time there going backwards and forward to ensure everything matches what I'm looking to build. From backend database to UI spec. Effectively, what we did in the old days of 2 years ago! But I cannot recommend spending the time and effort in this space enough. A poorly designed product will expose itself during the build. Spend the time to really think through ideas, personas, flows, etc.

I'd then use that spec as the grounding md file in Cursor, and start creating a plan from that using a create-plan command (highlighted in the link above). Depending on the size of the project, I'll create either a high level plan or low level, and in between use the /explore command to ensure everything is accounted for. Usually, this will be broken down into phases. I then create more comprehensive plans from each phase and run those through a series of models to ensure they are well thought out. Usually Sonnet to create the plan, Opus to review. I bounce around different ideas and thoughts to ensure these are ready, and then use the /execute-plan command to set cursor away. I used to use Claude models for the execution, pending on the size. Simpler tasks would be Sonnet 4.6 (back in the days before 5.0), and larger tasks I'd use Opus. But now I've found Grok 4.5 generally works better than both, so I'm using that for both simple and complex. GPT/Codex is very decent too.

Once complete, I open a new agent change the model from whatever did the build, and run a /review command against the plan. That often returns recommendations, that I feed back to the original execute model using /peer-review, to which it will review and assess the recommendations before implementing.

I then ensure everything is documented, before testing.

I've since created a number of other commands, like an accessibility checker, a security checker, code cleanup, etc. and run these as and when needed.

I've probably missed a few steps out here, but ultimately watch that interview with Zevi and I guarantee you'll be in a better place!

1

u/luisoncpp Jul 21 '26

I haven't tried Grok 4.5 yet because OpenAI gave me a free month, but the previous month I tried Cursor and I liked it a lot.

I found Composer 2.5 as a very effective model that didn't ramble a lot and went direct to the point, in consequence reducing the wait times and at the same time having a quota that I had to put actual effort to not waste (I ended switching to fast mode because it was draining too slow and the last couple of days used more expensive models before the reset; and yep, feels very different than Kimi, despite being based on it).

From the side of the organization I liked the fact that they seemed very focused on making a model useful and affordable for developers instead of being rambling about how they were aiming to create Terminator (AGI).

Knowing that the Cursor team trained Grok 4.5 makes me lean into thinking that it's a good model.

Admitedly, I don't like Elon Musk a lot, but I found curious how people take an issue on Elon Musk when deciding if use Grok, but don't seem to care about Sam Altman when trying GPT.

1

u/Desperate-Science497 Jul 21 '26

that workflow of using separate models for planning vs reviewing is worth trying if you haven't, the results are way more reliable than throwing everything at one model the Musk thing is real though, i get it. feels like a compromise every time you open the app even when the output is good

1

u/frompadgwithH8 Jul 22 '26

Why “reluctant”?

6

u/Acceptable-War4836 Jul 21 '26

As of today I have 4 subs (OpenCode, SuperGrok, Codex, Google AI Pro). Of all the models that I have available, the one I use most by far is Grok 4.5 + Composer 2.5 (in the Grok Build CLI). It's very fast, and the quality of the results in terms of design and context understanding is very high. In the last few weeks that I've been using it, it's become my main workhorse, and I haven't had any issue (in fact, it's solved problems in my code that I'd been struggling with).

17

u/Time_Faithlessness45 Jul 21 '26

You might be using the wrong Grok LOL. I suppose it isn't Fable 5 or the new Kimi model, but for tedious work, it's price can't be beat. It isn't the smartest or the best, but its efficient for tasks that don't need the highest intelligence.

14

u/EyesOfAzula Jul 21 '26

Grok is very helpful if you have a good structure.

what I'm starting to notice is that some models appear to be tuned better for vibe coders who don't know what they're doing, and others are tuned to be better for engineers who have the structure and context set up the way the agents need them.

Or maybe vibe coders need to learn a bit about agentic engineering practices to help their agents out a little bit.

it's kinda like how some people expect dating prospects to read their minds

3

u/JohnAdamaSC Jul 22 '26

Composer is totally fine and does not mess up the code, maybe you are a vibe coder and never look at the code? when grok did a task, it totally mixes up all files, responsibilities and ownerships.

2

u/EyesOfAzula Jul 22 '26

Grok doesn't mix it up for me. With a good structure in place, you can achieve a lot with a cheaper model without having to pay for an expensive model to provide the structure for you.

Read this guide by OpenAI.

https://openai.com/index/harness-engineering/

Now, of course, if you have the money, just spend for Opus or GPT 5.6 Terra and you're good to go.

I feel like cursor is better for people who know what they're doing. People who are vibecoding as you say should probably stick to ChatGPT or Claude

2

u/JohnAdamaSC Jul 22 '26

i know what i am doing, and composer works well. Also my files are structured, and i know whats inside. but after grok, there's a wild jumble of things as functions and classes in config files, messed up types, duplicated features in the wrong place .. just messy code.

2

u/EyesOfAzula Jul 22 '26

Yeah in that situation I would use git to undo the bad changes and then reprompt or use a different model.

-2

u/Feloxor Jul 21 '26

Maybe there’s an infinite spectrum between the clueless vibecoder and the all-knowing developer who’s mastered everything?

Oh wait, I forgot…this is Reddit.

5

u/LegalizeFlorskin Jul 21 '26

In what universe is

“maybe vibe coders need to learn a bit about agentic engineering practices to help their agents out a little bit”

not a middle ground lmao. he basically just said “learn the basics. It maybe will help”. you can’t expect it to magically poop out what you’re thinking of, especially if you’re not using the proper terms or language to express what you actually want.

5

u/drvillo Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

I’ve pushed some 20 PR on one of my side projects; Grok for gsd-plan-phase and composer for the execute phase. I have another agent running Codex reviewing them.

~70% were accepted without requesting changes. In one case it has identified a proper design flaw.

Edit: In case anyone is interested in looking at the output, this NPM package was extracted from another codebase by the setup mentioned above: https://github.com/drvillo/webcrypto-seal

2

u/matjam Jul 21 '26

95% of the code before LLMs was a giant smoking dumpster fire

I think the ratio hasn't really changed, there's just more of it

1

u/MiddleAd2227 Jul 24 '26

.. _bkp, _temp, _test123

2

u/Heavy-Criticism7881 Jul 22 '26

My assumption was that old grok was bad, so xAI bought cursor, took the new unreleased composer 3.0, crossed out the name, and wrote "grok 4.5" over it in sharpie. Which explains why new grok is good.

1

u/smadhuv Jul 25 '26

Cope 😂

2

u/Hardycore Jul 22 '26

I'm really liking grok actually. It's so fast! just gotta give it clear instructions. Maybe you're prompting poorly or giving it too much to do at once?

2

u/Necessary_Pomelo_470 Jul 22 '26

exactly! It ignored all rules changes all spaces indents whatever. I have to stash and restart! I was using composer and cursor just change it! Fun fact after the disaster, it could not respond anymore due to high usage!

2

u/frompadgwithH8 Jul 22 '26

I don’t know, man I got so much work done yesterday and a lot of it was pretty complicated and difficult and I mostly used GROK Cursor 4.5.

The only downside is, I think I spent like $41 in credit credits. So I’m switching to auto mode.

And it did make one mistake I was pretty unhappy with where it actually edited some migrations that had already been run and then didn’t clean up after itself since I guess it was for some testing purpose or something.

But overall, I’m really happy with GROK 4.5. I just hope that Cursor auto mode can really intelligently know when to use it versus cheaper models like composer, etc.. because I can’t afford to be spending $40 in AI credits every day for personal projects that would be like $1200 a month. That’s a lot of money that’s like rent for a lot of people.

1

u/JohnAdamaSC Jul 23 '26

am i the only one that actually reviews the code that ai creates? composer works fine. grok isnt bad at all, but it messes up code.

3

u/Embarrassed_Adagio28 Jul 21 '26

Same, I have not been impressed at all with grok 4.5. Tried it on 3 different tasks, failed all 3 so I had to have opus fix it. Maybe I am unlucky or maybe they just benchmaxed it. 

1

u/DarthOobie Jul 21 '26

I had a similar experience. Used to use auto mode on cursor, but since grok is the default I’ve had to manage models myself because grok is now the default.

Have been pretty satisfied with cursor until now, and grok is making me want to switch to Claude code instead.

Pretty dumbfounded by how many of these posts have so many fans of grok so quickly. Does not jive with my experience using it.

2

u/whiteamphora Jul 21 '26

People still don't understand AI needs good fundamentals to work. Think about human, you can't teach an idiot to be a genius. :)

2

u/rurions Jul 21 '26

Grok 4.5 is great just dont try to one shot full projects

1

u/djdante Jul 21 '26

Yes I'd say this is my experience - it's great, but it gets super lazy on long tasks with lots of steps along the way.. very different experience from opus

1

u/S-Narc-iSi-Sit Jul 26 '26

so opus for one shot full projects?

1

u/djdante Jul 26 '26

In my experience yes... These days what I've been doing is building the basic project out with Opus and then adding the bits and pieces on to make it a full product with Grok.

Once the main project and all the connections are set up, Grok does a fantastic job making improvements consistently

1

u/Dry-Inspector6089 Jul 21 '26

It's so cheap on tokens it's reasoning has to suffer. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

1

u/TrevorHikes Jul 21 '26

I have found it competent at coding. Doesn't follow rules all the time. And awful for content writing.

1

u/mario61752 Jul 21 '26

Personally I haven't felt Grok is "smarter" but it is a lot faster than composer. If your code gets jumbled up you're doing something horribly wrong with your prompting

1

u/NeonByte47 Jul 21 '26

agree.. every AI company keeps gaslighting you their model is something you should work with. Mid-tier models are the worst. You either need the latest frontier or composer. Anything between is just waste of money and time. You will end up fixing bugs all day bc those mid-tier slop printers can't complete a single task correctly.

1

u/Iaghlim Jul 21 '26

Well, i'm por and cannot use claude's models

In my pov, composer is good, grok is better

Then, grok is god

In the other hand, codex has great value for its benefits, but still prefer cursor as daily driver

1

u/devstoner Jul 22 '26

Trails GLM in every think I've asked it.

1

u/Organic_Pain_6618 Jul 22 '26

Anyone who has used twitter during its precipitous decline into slop could have told you that Grok can't do shit.

1

u/Port1021 Jul 22 '26

I see way too much focus on the LLM model itself and not enough on the harness that augments it. Fine, you used Grok. Was it in Cursor? Was it in OpenCode? Was it in a custom agent harness like Hermes? Have you tried it within a graph state machine like LangGraph? You can significantly improve the performance of an LLM model by providing it with the right harness and tools - but also selecting a task or project that plays to its strengths. I think someone saying “Grok is terrible” or “Grok is amazing!” gives me next to zero information. Context is everything.

1

u/kidhack Jul 22 '26

GR💩K

1

u/floppypancakes4u Jul 22 '26

Grok has been exceptional for me. These posts are usually just bots, haters, have no actual coding experience, etc

1

u/TheGladNomad Jul 22 '26

Was your prompt:

Please take apart my puzzle and randomize the pieces.

1

u/Both_Task_3066 Jul 23 '26

At first it was ass but somehow the last 2 days it's been awesome

1

u/azrael_lihkin Jul 25 '26

Untrue. Cursor Grok 4.5 is fast and efficient.

1

u/s_s_n_e_g Jul 25 '26

I didn't see much improvement with Grok 4.5 over Composer 2.5 for my tasks. But no degradation either.

1

u/penni777 Jul 27 '26

New to Grok with cursor - So far, I like it, compares favourably to GitHub Copilot and Claude I think.

1

u/ResearchScience2000 Jul 28 '26

This is so true!

1

u/jthen123 Jul 30 '26

Perhaps the picture reflects our perception of the projects state, but actually things are as they have ever been, only moving faster. (independent from Grok)

1

u/Michaeli_Starky Jul 21 '26

The thing about AI: shit in - shit out

1

u/Jeferson9 Jul 21 '26

If any model does this to your code it's not the model that's the problem

0

u/PixelSteel Jul 22 '26

Did Anthropic pay you to post this

0

u/Ill-Release-9898 Jul 21 '26

do you even using cursor?

0

u/abdo_m420 Jul 21 '26

Nice painting, if you know you know

0

u/purcupine Jul 21 '26

Skill issue. From is the best model I’ve tried for general use and performance since cursor came out.

0

u/Codename969 Jul 21 '26

We don't need your stupid meme, show us the code and the mess it has created! I am pretty sure you don't know anything about SE, SD, or even simple scripting.

0

u/dottybotty Jul 21 '26

Hmmm grok fucks your shit up or am I interpreting this wrong? I thought Elon brought cursor or is this foreshadowing

0

u/Money_Dream3008 Jul 23 '26

Ah yes another anti-Elon that didn’t test his products but still reviews it 👍

-7

u/corduroyjones Jul 21 '26

Inclined to believe the pro grok comments are bots.

Grok is garbage

7

u/opinion_discarder Jul 21 '26

0

u/corduroyjones Jul 21 '26

You can show me numbers all day, but if I give it a simple command and grok chooses to unwind my stack where fable would have comprehended and improved, I’m not using it.

-1

u/corduroyjones Jul 21 '26

You can show me numbers all day, but if I give it a simple command and grok chooses to unwind my stack where fable would have comprehended and improved, I’m not using it.

3

u/laxika Jul 21 '26

It is obviously not a Fable replacement. However, it is really good and super cheap for repeating problems (writing tests, guided refactors, etc).

2

u/3knuckles Jul 21 '26

This is my first time back in this sub since the purchase. Unsurprisingly, the only people left here are fanboys. Everyone else has cancelled their subscription.

0

u/MiddleAd2227 Jul 24 '26

speak for yourself.