Podcast Summary: AI Hustle – Cursor Automates AI Coding Agent Tasks

Hosts: Jaeden Schafer and Jamie McCauley
Air Date: March 19, 2026
Episode Theme: Exploring Cursor’s new Automations feature – how AI coding agents are transforming software workflows for developers and beyond.

Episode Overview

This episode dives into "Cursor Automations," a new feature in the popular Cursor AI coding platform. The hosts break down how automated software agents are streamlining repetitive developer tasks, why this matters for the future of AI in business, and how these capabilities could soon empower non-coders too.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What Is Cursor Automations? (01:00–03:38)

• Cursor is a fast-growing code-gen tool for developers, similar to Claude Code.
• New “Automations” let agents handle repeated coding and maintenance tasks autonomously, without manual intervention.

“It sounds like it’s essentially a way to maintain all the code that is made by agents. So kind of like a prompt and a monitoring device, which is really useful, especially when you're setting these agents free to do whatever they want.” — Jamie (01:07)

2. How Automations Work – Direct from Cursor Team (03:39–05:12)

• Jack and John from Cursor introduce Automations:
  • Agents now trigger on events (like a PagerDuty alert or a nightly cron schedule), run tasks, and return actionable results (like pull requests or issue triage).
  • Automations are already in use for incident triage, nightly code cleanup, and responding instantly to feature requests from their community.
  • The process is more “prompt-driven” than traditional checkbox-based configurations.

“If you want comments to be inline threaded comments on GitHub, just prompt your agent to do so. All of these things that people are used to configuring with checkboxes, you don't need to do that anymore. Just prompt your agent.” — Jack, Cursor (04:42)

3. Industry Perspectives & Use Cases (05:12–07:13)

Developer Focus & No-Code Future

• Hosts note that while Cursor and its main competitor Claude Code are developer-centric, these automation features will soon migrate into no-code tools (like Lovable, Base 44, and AI Box) and thus become accessible to non-coders.

Real-World Example:

• Jamie built an app in Lovable to find businesses with bad websites, automating prospect lists via API. He envisions how automation like Cursor's could take this further—running overnight and delivering leads automatically each morning.

“If you could take this further and kind of automate it…and then I could just wake up every morning with a list of 20 businesses to call—that could be a form of automation.” — Jamie (06:24)

Importance of Security

• Potential comes with security concerns, especially when giving agents broad access. Keeping automations in a tightly managed ecosystem like Cursor’s can help alleviate this.

4. Bridging to Mainstream AI Tools (08:18–10:44)

ChatGPT & Scheduled Automations

• Jaeden explores whether ChatGPT will gain similar “background agent” features—scheduled execution of tasks, automated reminders, and more.
• Suggests that while tools like ChatGPT Pulse offer some of this, such automations will soon be ubiquitous for both coders and non-coders.
• The move: From “just in time” prompts to reliable, scheduled, recurring agent tasks.

“Technically you could make a prompt and tell your agent to do that…but it’s just so much easier to hard code like a schedule that initiates automatically every day at a specific time.” — Jaeden (09:41)

Broader Applications

• Stock traders, newsletter editors, content creators—all could soon wake up to fresh, AI-prepared reports, emails, or content, proactively compiled by background agents.

5. Product Inspiration and Takeaways (10:44–11:34)

• Jaeden inspired to add similar automations to AI Box, his own tool, envisaging newsletter creation, scheduling, and more.
• Predicts that this “agent meets cron job” approach will be standard feature in most SaaS and productivity products in the near future.

“Huge kudos to Cursor…It’s also giving a lot of people ideas on how to implement this into software that regular non-coders are also going to be using.” — Jaeden (11:20)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “As agents have gotten really capable at handling work autonomously, we found ourselves kicking them off over and over again for the same type of task. So we thought, why not automate that?” — John, Cursor (03:44)
• “By the time [I] roll out of bed all groggy, the agent has come back with a likely root cause…So I just need to merge the PR and I can go back to sleep.” — John, Cursor (04:05)
• “The way we do software development has changed so much in the last nine months.” — Jack, Cursor (04:34)
• “Even if you were a stock trader…to have it pop that up for you, first thing when you wake up in the morning, that would be super useful…” — Jamie (10:28)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:00 – Episode topic intro: Cursor and agentic coding tools
• 03:39 – Cursor Automations announcement (Jack and John)
• 05:12 – Hosts’ reactions; implications for devs and non-coders
• 06:24 – Jamie's Lovable app automation example
• 08:18 – Comparisons to ChatGPT and mainstream AI agent future
• 10:44 – Potential for automations in SaaS and no-code platforms
• 11:20 – Jaeden discusses product inspiration for AI Box

Takeaways

• Cursor Automations represents a leap forward in agent-based coding: repeating, time-based, and triggered actions can now be completely offloaded to AI agents.
• While currently focused on developers, this paradigm is quickly spreading to low-code/no-code tools and will soon become a standard in productivity and business software.
• Security, community-driven features, and user-friendly scheduling are key to adoption.
• The broader trend: the age of scheduled, proactive, and truly “autonomous” AI is arriving—not just for coders, but for all entrepreneurs and knowledge workers.

Curious about Cursor Automations, AI agents, or building your own hustle with AI?
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