Cursor Made Crystal Clear · chapter 2: The Mental Model: Four Ways to Work
The four modes, by scope of change and degree of autonomy
2026-09-28
Later chapters each zoom into one quadrant.
Below: the paragraph from the book that builds this idea, then the diagram itself (Figure 2.2), and a recap. About a minute of reading.
Put the four modes on one chart and a pattern falls out immediately. Figure 2.2 places Tab, Inline Edit, Ask, and Agent by how much of the codebase they touch and how much they are trusted to do without you. Tab: narrow scope, low autonomy, the edit you already meant to make. Inline Edit: narrow scope, higher autonomy, one described change applied to a selection you chose. Agent: wide scope, high autonomy, a loop that can touch many files and run commands on its own. Ask sits apart from the other three: a wide scope of what it can read, and zero autonomy to change anything, because it never writes.
Recap
- The idea: Later chapters each zoom into one quadrant.
- The picture: Figure 2.2, from chapter 2 ("The Mental Model: Four Ways to Work") of Cursor Made Crystal Clear.
- Go deeper: the chapter builds this step by step, with recipes and sources at the end.
This diagram is one of many in Cursor Made Crystal Clear.
Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.
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