Cursor or Claude Code for multi-file refactoring?
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When making small one-file edits most AI coding tools feel pretty similar. But as soon as a change touches six or seven files at once, the experience is completely different.
In Editor UI tools watching the side-by-side diff file by file feels safer. Working through terminal agents is definitely faster for broad edits but it's much easier to miss subtle breaking changes or bad tests until hours later.
How do you decide between visual diff tools and CLI agents when doing large code refactors?
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During a multi-file refactor, the agent generated a fix and a passing test. Reverting the change showed the test still passed, because it never tested the bug in the first place. Revert the implementation first to verify the test actually breaks before moving on.
I am fully on the terminal side, and I stopped relying on reading diffs for safety. What catches the subtle breaks for me is letting the machine do the checking: the agent runs the analyzer after every change that could plausibly not compile, and builds and runs the app once a feature lands, so a broken import or a renamed field shows up in seconds, not hours. The second part is commit size. Every finished stage gets its own commit before the next one starts, so a big refactor becomes five reviewable commits instead of one wall of changes, and if something turns up later, bisecting points at one small step. The diff view still has a place for me, but at the end, on the commit, not while the agent is typing. Konstantin's tip above is the right one for tests, revert and watch it fail.