Windsurf

Windsurf is Codeium's rebrand of their editor into an agent-first IDE, and it's the first one I've used where the AI feels like it actually belongs in the workflow rather than bolted on. Cascade mode is the headline feature: you describe what you want, and the agent plans, edits multiple files, and iterates without you babysitting every step. It's closer to Cursor's Composer than Claude Desktop's chat window, which matters when you're refactoring across a dozen files. MCP support arrived recently and it's solid but not exhaustive. Tools and resources work as expected, which covers most servers you'd actually want to run. Prompts and sampling aren't supported yet, so if you're building workflows around those primitives, you'll need to wait or use Claude Desktop. Config lives in `~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json` and follows the standard schema, so if you've set up MCP elsewhere, you'll copy-paste and be done in two minutes. What sets Windsurf apart is the built-in memory system. Cascade remembers context across sessions without you manually feeding it the same README every time. I've found this genuinely useful when working on a feature over multiple days. The agent recalls architectural decisions and doesn't ask me to re-explain the database schema. It's not perfect, but it's better than starting cold every morning. The free tier is unusually generous: unlimited basic completions and a meaningful amount of Cascade requests. You'll hit limits if you're hammering it all day, but for most developers it's enough to evaluate properly. Paid tiers unlock more Cascade usage and faster models. Rough edges: the UI occasionally lags when Cascade is planning complex changes, and error messages from MCP servers can be cryptic. The editor itself is a fork of VS Code, so extensions mostly work, but there's the usual friction when something doesn't. I'd also like to see the MCP config UI integrated rather than editing JSON by hand, though that's a minor complaint. I reach for Windsurf when I'm building something new or refactoring aggressively. For quick edits or one-off scripts, VS Code with Copilot is faster to open. But for sustained work where the AI needs to understand a whole project, Windsurf is the best option I've used that isn't Cursor.