I Tried To Make My Neovim AI Setup As Smooth as Cursor… I failed

That sort of design looks simple. But it’s not easy to create.

If you aren’t familiar with Cursor, it is a fork of VSCode that has been modified to allow slick interactions with AI Agents.

I am a long time fan of Neovim and I’ve wanted to create a similar experience as Cursor with regards to AI tools. I was determined to make it just as smooth.

Tab Feature

Who doesn’t love the tab feature in Cursor. I must use it over one hundred times a day. Importing a function or component — Easy! Completing a useState line — Easy! Writing that next unit test — Easy!

Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab.

How to get this in Neovim?

I tried Supermaven. I’ll be honest, I was a little underwhelmed. I mean it worked, but it was slow to predict and some of the predictions were off quite a bit.

In one example I was refactoring a bit of redux code which meant replacing the same line of code is multiple files. I wrote this out once expecting to tab my way through the other files but instead I had to write a lot of the code out again each time to get the right prediction.

Not great.

Chat Feature

Next up was the Chat Feature. I feel this is a crucial part of Cursor’s success.

One of it’s most prominent features is the AI Agent Chat panel — cmd + i

Wherever you are in the editor, you press cmd + i and you’re in the AI chat window. You can @, / and select code in the chat to give the model more context. It makes it really easy to code along with AI.

Trying To Get An AI Chat Window In Neovim

I started with avante.nvim. It’s described as:

Which to be fair it tries to be. However, upon setting it up I had some issues:

• It took me an age to get the configuration right. The docs are fine but finding the right string for the model I wanted and then setting up the API KEY in my zshrc file was just messy. It required quite a bit of iteration.
• I kept getting errors. Once I did get it working it would work for a bit but then would start to throw errors. Error model provider and that was it. I probably could have dived deeper into it but it was strange it was working one minute and not the next.
• The biggest issue was the UX though. It outputted the response from the AI super quick. Due to the width of the panel it would scroll down really fast with the output. So I couldn’t read it as it went. I then had to scroll up and then it wasn’t clear where the last answer finished and the new one started.

Ultimately, it was difficult to use and seemed very fragile. I moved on.

Opencode To The Rescue… Kinda

I turned to Opencode. When I first started using it, I had to keep opening a terminal window in Neovim or switch windows in tmux to access it. This was annoying.

Then I discovered this plugin: https://github.com/NickvanDyke/opencode.nvim which gives you a very similar experience to Cursor with Opencode appearing on the right in a panel. This is more like it!

I already had a Claude pro account but due to the recent changes from Anthropic (make of that what you will) I had to purchase some more credit and use an api key.

In some ways this is fine as I can really track how much usage I am using in regards to tokens, but on the other hand I am having to pay up to 5x for the same service basically.

Tangent: Actually this quite pisses me off. I don’t want to use Claude code on principle and I shouldn’t be forced into it by Anthropic. They have two different products — Claude code and their models. They are getting my money so why do they care if I use Claude code or not. Their models are better so I use it. Opencode is better so I should be able to use it.

This whole complication with the Anthropic api and the cost actually ultimately hurts Opencode and Neovim users in the end and it’s part of the reason why I didn’t stick with the Neovim/Opencode combination.

Cost — $$$

In terms of DX, I think the Neovim/Opencode experience got pretty close to the Cursor experience but I was constantly checking the api usage. It’s not so cheap actually. I don’t use AI that much but still I was burning through tokens at quite a rate.

With Cursor I never have to check this. I pay $20 a month and I’ve never had a problem reaching any limit or anything. I can use Opus 4.5 and I can be productive. I’m sure if I switched completely to Neovim/Opencode I would burn through $20 on the API very quickly and my overall costs would increase quite a bit.

I like getting value for money at the end of the day. In fact it’s very important to me and Cursor ultimately gives you the best value currently.

Conclusion

Through this whole process of trying to get a super smooth AI experience in Neovim I realised how good the Cursor product is (at least in terms of AI integration).

I have reverted back (for now) to using Cursor in my day to day work as I can be really productive and the experience is just really good. The value proposition is also better with Cursor currently.

However, I am still using Neovim when I want to concentrate on some code without AI distracting me every two seconds.

The whole situation with having to pay for the Anthropic API, despite having a Claude pro account, left a bad taste in my mouth. Opus 4.5 is the best model at the moment for my style and work so I will be sticking with it, but a little begrudgingly. It’s a shame I can’t use my pro account to link to Opencode as then I would be much more tempted to stick with Neovim/Opencode.

But money is an issue in this AI game. Maybe some devs don’t care but I don’t want to be spending $200 a month on an AI service. I have three kids, a mortgage, a dog and a house to look after. My kids need food, not dumb little vibe coded apps that aren’t going to generate any income.

Let’s see what happens in the future, but kudos to the Cursor team for making such a smooth product (even if 75% of the work was done before they forked VSCode).

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