Mikie vs Cursor: works inside it.
Cursor is an IDE with retrieval baked in. Mikie is the context and measurement layer that works inside Cursor — and everywhere else.
What Cursor is
Cursor bundles codebase retrieval, chat, and agent runs into a closed editor. It decides what context your model sees, and the token bill arrives with no per-turn receipt.
Positioning comparison — we have no measured head-to-head rows for Cursor's internal retrieval, so we don't publish invented numbers.
The honest read
Cursor's retrieval is good and we haven't measured against it. What we can prove: with Mikie wired in over MCP, every Cursor turn gets a compact packet and a ledger row — tokens, cost, retries, outcome.
Verdict
Not either/or. Keep Cursor; add Mikie for exact-path context and receipts.
Measure it on your own repo.
Every claim above traces to a measurement row or is labeled as positioning. That’s the product.