Guardrails that make Cursor safe for large refactors
Agentic edits across many files are powerful and easy to over-trust. A few habits keep a big refactor reviewable.
A multi-file refactor is exactly where an assistant saves the most time and where a wrong assumption does the most damage. The goal is to keep the change reviewable at every step, not to land it in one giant leap.
Work in small, verifiable slices. Ask for one mechanical change at a time, run the tests, and commit. A green test suite between slices is your safety net. Give the agent the intent and the boundary, then check the diff as if a teammate opened the pull request.
Keep the architecture decisions yourself. Decide the target shape, then let the tool fill it in. When a change spans a module boundary, review that seam by hand; that is where silent breakage hides.
Key points
- ·Refactor in small slices with green tests between them.
- ·Own the target design; let the tool fill it in.
- ·Hand-review changes that cross a module boundary.
Sources
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