Joel Varty
Series: Building This Site

Switching from Cursor to Claude Code: A New Development Partner

Workcodingai

I started building this personal website using Cursor as my primary AI coding assistant. But here's the thing about AI development tools - they're evolving rapidly, and it's worth experimenting. Today I switched to Claude Code to see how it handles project handoff and continuation.

Switching from Cursor to Claude Code: A New Development Partner

Date: January 8, 2026
Author: Joel Varty (with Claude Code)
Phase: 7 → 9 (Discovery & Transition)

How We Got Here

I started building this personal website using Cursor as my primary AI coding assistant. Cursor did a fantastic job - it built out the entire infrastructure, created all the Agility CMS models, implemented the blog system with seven different gallery types, and got us about 80% of the way there.

But here's the thing about AI development tools - they're evolving rapidly, and it's worth experimenting. I've been hearing great things about Claude Code, Anthropic's official CLI tool, and I wanted to see how it handles project handoff and continuation.

The Handoff Challenge

When you switch AI assistants mid-project, you're essentially asking a new developer to jump into an existing codebase. The challenge is context - can the new tool understand:

  • What's already been built?
  • What still needs to be done?
  • The architectural decisions that were made?
  • The patterns and conventions in use?

The Surprise Discovery: Using Agility MCP

Instead of just reading the documentation and accepting it at face value, Claude Code did something Cursor hadn't done recently - it actually queried the Agility CMS instance directly using the MCP server.

The Big Discovery

Remember MANUAL-CMS-SETUP.md? The file that said I still needed to create the /about, /career, and /uses pages manually?

Turns out they already existed!

Claude Code discovered:

  • ✅ /about page exists (pageID: 6) with RichTextArea + Hero + BasicMarkdown components
  • ✅ /career page exists (pageID: 7) with Hero + CareerTimeline components
  • ✅ /uses page exists (pageID: 8) with Hero + UsesSection components

This is exactly the kind of thing you want an AI assistant to catch - the gap between documentation and reality.

Claude Code vs. Cursor: Initial Observations

Claude Code Strengths (So Far):

  1. Proactive Investigation - It didn't just read docs, it verified them against reality using MCP
  2. Systematic Approach - Very methodical in how it explored the codebase
  3. MCP Integration - Seamlessly used the Agility CMS MCP server to query real data
  4. Comprehensive Reporting - Gave me a detailed, well-organized status report

What Cursor Did Well:

  1. Building the Foundation - Created the entire infrastructure from scratch
  2. Component Implementation - Built all 7 gallery types, all Agility components
  3. Process Documentation - Generated detailed docs as it worked
  4. Problem Solving - Figured out complex issues like the BlogDetails dynamicPageItem fix

What This Tells Us About AI-Assisted Development

  1. Documentation is Critical - Having comprehensive documentation makes handoffs possible
  2. MCP Servers are Game-Changers - The ability for Claude Code to directly query Agility CMS was powerful
  3. Verification Matters - Documentation can get out of sync with reality; tools that verify are valuable
  4. Context is King - The more context you provide, the better results you get

Joel's Thoughts

This is fascinating to me. I'm not just building a website - I'm also experimenting with how different AI tools approach software development. Claude Code's first action was to verify the documentation against reality using the MCP server, which is exactly what a good developer would do when joining a project.

The future of software development is weird, wonderful, and full of AI assistants. I'm here for it.