Chief + Cursor: Better Together

At a glance

What is Chief?

Chief is an AI-native agent manager. It sits above coding agents like Claude Code and Codex and handles everything between "here's what I want" and "here's the shipped result" — planning what to build, figuring out what comes next, dispatching agents across your portfolio, and reviewing output before it ships.

Cursor is where you are when you want your hands on the code: reading a diff, shaping an API, fixing the one thing an agent got subtly wrong. Chief is what keeps the rest of your portfolio moving while you do that.

Chief uses a BYOA (bring-your-own-agent) model. You connect the coding agents you already pay for — Claude Code, Codex, Qwen Code, OpenCode, or Kimi Code — and Chief dispatches them. It never touches your editor.

How Chief and Cursor fit together

1. Chief delegates; Cursor is where you dig in

Every project has two kinds of work: the work you want to do yourself and the work you'd rather hand off. Cursor is excellent at the first kind — Tab completion, inline edits, and Agent mode make hands-on coding fast.

Chief handles the second kind. Give it a goal and it plans the milestones, dispatches a coding agent for each one, and reviews the result. You stay in Cursor for the parts that need your judgment while Chief's agents handle the rest.

2. Plan complex goals once, execute in one shot

In Cursor, a big feature is a long series of prompts — you decide the order, carry the context between steps, and notice when something was skipped.

Chief provides structured one-shot execution. Give it "implement Stripe billing with usage metering and team plans" and Chief decomposes it into dependency-aware milestones — the schema migration before the API endpoints, the webhook handler before the billing page. Each milestone has acceptance criteria and a review gate. You approve the plan once; Chief executes the entire sequence with checkpoints you can inspect.

3. Proactive management between editing sessions

Cursor works when you're typing. Close the laptop and nothing moves.

Chief is proactive. It analyzes project state, understands what's been completed, what's blocked, and what's ready to start — then proposes the next milestones. When you come back to Cursor in the morning, the groundwork is already in place and Chief has already figured out what should happen next.

4. Scale beyond one window

Cursor shows you one workspace at a time. Five projects means five windows, five contexts in your head, and no view of what's in flight anywhere else.

Chief manages agents across all your projects simultaneously. Dispatch Claude Code to three repos and Codex to two more, and see all progress in one dashboard. Chief tracks what's in flight everywhere and sequences cross-project dependencies. Your output multiplies with each project you add — without multiplying the number of windows you juggle.

5. Review agent work where you're already comfortable

Chief's agents produce commits on your own machine. When a milestone finishes, open the changes in Cursor, read the diff with the tooling you already know, and polish anything that needs a human touch. Chief did the planning and the first pass; Cursor is where you finish.

6. Quality gates before the code reaches you

Cursor's BugBot reviews pull requests once they exist. Chief reviews earlier: every milestone is checked against its acceptance criteria before the result is surfaced to you. At high parallelism — five projects, multiple agents — this first-pass review is what keeps you from becoming the bottleneck. BugBot still runs on the pull request afterward; the two layers stack.

When to add Chief

Add Chief to your Cursor workflow when:

• You want to scale across projects. Chief lets you manage agents across your entire portfolio from one dashboard — not five Cursor windows.
• You want one-shot execution of complex goals. Give Chief a goal, approve the plan, and it executes the full milestone sequence with checkpoints and review gates.
• You want progress while you're away. Chief figures out what to work on next and keeps agents moving between your editing sessions.
• You want to mix providers. Route Claude Code, Codex, and other agents to the milestones each handles best, managed from a single interface.
• You're on a team. Unified visibility shows what every agent is doing across every project.
• You want quality gates at scale. Chief reviews agent output against acceptance criteria before it hits your inbox.

Chief doesn't replace Cursor — it takes the delegated work off your plate so your time in the editor goes where it matters.

Getting started in 5 minutes

Already using Cursor? Adding Chief takes minutes, and your editor setup doesn't change.

1. Sign up for Chief — free trial, no credit card.
2. Connect your coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, Qwen Code, OpenCode, or Kimi Code via BYOA. No additional agent costs.
3. Import a project — give Chief a GitHub repo URL. It builds project context automatically.
4. Set a goal — describe what you want accomplished in plain language.
5. Approve the plan — Chief proposes milestones with acceptance criteria. Review and approve.
6. Open the results in Cursor — Chief dispatches agents, reviews the output, and the changes land on your machine ready to inspect.

Your Cursor workflow stays the same — it just stops being the only place work happens.

FAQ

Is Chief a replacement for Cursor?

No. Cursor is an editor; Chief is a manager for coding agents. Many Chief users keep Cursor open for hands-on work while Chief drives the delegated work in the background. If you want the head-to-head view instead, see Chief vs Cursor.

Does Chief dispatch Cursor's agent?

Not today. Chief dispatches Claude Code, Codex, Qwen Code, OpenCode, and Kimi Code through its BYOA model. Cursor's Agent and Cloud Agents stay yours to drive from the editor.

Do I need Cursor to use Chief?

No. Chief is IDE-agnostic. It dispatches coding agents in the background and the results land as commits on your machine — open them in whatever editor you prefer.

How is Chief different from Cursor's Cloud Agents?

Cloud Agents run a single task away from your machine. Chief manages the full lifecycle — planning, decomposition, dispatch, review, and coordination — across every project you own, and proposes what to do next when a milestone ships.

Can I keep using BugBot?

Yes. BugBot reviews pull requests; Chief reviews each milestone against its acceptance criteria before the work reaches you. They operate at different stages and don't interfere with each other.

How does Chief decide what to work on next?

Chief maintains persistent project context — completed milestones, in-flight work, project goals, codebase state. It uses this context to proactively propose the next milestones. You approve or redirect; Chief drives the pace.

Will Chief's agents conflict with my hands-on edits?

Chief only works on milestones you've approved, so you always know which part of the codebase an agent is touching. Keep your hands-on editing and your delegated milestones on separate concerns, and the two never collide.