Hand small repo fixes to Cursor agents

A developer used Cursor agents to chip away at a daily batch of repo maintenance, bug fixes, and minor features.

Done with Cursor· Intermediate

What they did
Zachary Proser turned on Cursor’s GitHub app for his organizations, which let the agents pull repositories into isolated sandboxes, create branches, and run commands. Every morning, he assigned 5-7 modest tasks across maintenance, bug work, and small feature requests, each linked to a chosen repo and branch. He then checked the output, continued the conversation in per-task chat when needed, or brought the changes into the Cursor editor for manual review.
How it went
Most of the queue was done or close to done before he finished his coffee. He said the agents landed the right answer on the first try about 70-80% of the time, versus 40-60% for Codex. Two trouble spots stood out: making a branch that did not yet exist caused an error, and back-and-forth branch work across several turns felt awkward.
Tips
This seems best for narrow jobs rather than large rewrites. He still handled bigger refactors and larger features himself in the editor, and it helps to make sure the branch exists before starting.

Try it yourself with Cursor

Take the GitHub repo [owner/repo] and split this list into separate Cursor background-agent jobs: [task 1], [task 2], [task 3]. For each job, clone the repo into a sandbox, work on its own branch, make the requested change, run any relevant checks, and prepare a short summary of what you changed. If a step would send something, merge something, delete something, or otherwise make a permanent change, stop and ask me before continuing.

Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.

Read the original on zackproser.com ↗

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