These two tools answer different questions. Claude Code answers "what if my agent IS the IDE?" The terminal is the surface, the repo is the working memory, and you compose larger workflows by stacking skills, sub-agents, and hooks. It is the right pick if you want to run agents headless, in CI, in cron, or alongside a real engineer rather than inside their editor.
Cursor answers "what if my IDE IS an agent?" The IDE is the surface, the agent is one panel among many, and the affordances feel like the editor you already know. It is the right pick if your team wants a single daily driver, prefers the visual diff-and-accept loop, and would rather not learn a new harness for autonomous runs.
For most senior engineers shipping today, the answer is yes. Run Cursor as the daily IDE and Claude Code for any work that needs to happen in the background, in CI, or across many files at once. The two coexist cleanly and the workflows compound. If you can only pick one and you live in the terminal, Claude Code. If you want the lowest activation energy and IDE polish, Cursor.