--- schema: 1 type: video title: 'Replacing 12K LoC with a 200 LoC Skill — David Gomes, Cursor' description: >- David Gomes shows how Cursor replaced a heavyweight WorkTrees feature with a lightweight layer built from skills, commands, and subagents. He walks through how parallel coding workflows were recreated with roughly 200 lines of Markdown, plus the tradeoffs, failure modes, and lessons that come with moving product behavior from code into prompts. Speaker info: - https://x.com/davidgomes - https://github.com/davidgomes/ Timestamps 0:14 Introduction and the concept of markdown as code 0:59 Recap of Git work trees in Cursor 3:10 Complexity of the initial implementation 4:18 Deleting 15,000 lines of code 4:54 Implementing features with Skills and Sub-agents 5:51 How the new Skills are structured 7:58 New Slash commands and workflow 9:58 Pros of the new implementation 12:15 Cons and user feedback challenges 14:17 Future improvements: Evals and RL training 17:05 What's next for Cursor 3.0 and native work trees --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/WE_Gnowy3uw-replacing-12k-loc-with-a-200-loc-skill Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- canonical: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/replacing-12k-loc-with-a-200-loc-skill-david-gomes-088d9402d065 markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/video/replacing-12k-loc-with-a-200-loc-skill-david-gomes-088d9402d065.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T14:48:30.078Z' language: null children: [] videoId: WE_Gnowy3uw durationSeconds: 1162 publishedAt: '2026-04-30T12:00:06.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 25 endSeconds: 110 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=25' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 120 endSeconds: 229 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=120' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 120 endSeconds: 229 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=120' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 241 endSeconds: 365 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=241' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 241 endSeconds: 365 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=241' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 376 endSeconds: 467 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=376' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 376 endSeconds: 467 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=376' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 467 endSeconds: 478 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=467' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 478 endSeconds: 601 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=478' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 478 endSeconds: 601 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=478' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 611 endSeconds: 739 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=611' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 611 endSeconds: 739 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=611' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 611 endSeconds: 739 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=611' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 749 endSeconds: 838 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=749' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 838 endSeconds: 849 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=838' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 849 endSeconds: 949 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=849' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 16 text: null startSeconds: 949 endSeconds: 959 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=949' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 17 text: null startSeconds: 959 endSeconds: 1048 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=959' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 18 text: null startSeconds: 1058 endSeconds: 1162 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=1058' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 19 text: null startSeconds: 1058 endSeconds: 1162 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/WE_Gnowy3uw?t=1058' heldReason: rights --- # Replacing 12K LoC with a 200 LoC Skill — David Gomes, Cursor David Gomes shows how Cursor replaced a heavyweight WorkTrees feature with a lightweight layer built from skills, commands, and subagents. He walks through how parallel coding workflows were recreated with roughly 200 lines of Markdown, plus the tradeoffs, failure modes, and lessons that come with moving product behavior from code into prompts. Speaker info: - https://x.com/davidgomes - https://github.com/davidgomes/ Timestamps 0:14 Introduction and the concept of markdown as code 0:59 Recap of Git work trees in Cursor 3:10 Complexity of the initial implementation 4:18 Deleting 15,000 lines of code 4:54 Implementing features with Skills and Sub-agents 5:51 How the new Skills are structured 7:58 New Slash commands and workflow 9:58 Pros of the new implementation 12:15 Cons and user feedback challenges 14:17 Future improvements: Evals and RL training 17:05 What's next for Cursor 3.0 and native work trees --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/WE_Gnowy3uw-replacing-12k-loc-with-a-200-loc-skill Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/replacing-12k-loc-with-a-200-loc-skill-david-gomes-088d9402d065 · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.