Bootstrapping New Projects with Cursor

How I used Cursor to clone my favorite blog setup — and how you can too*

When you’re spinning up new projects regularly, it doesn’t take long before you start to crave a “starter kit.” You know — all the integrations you like, the folder structure that feels right, maybe a few libraries you reach for every time. Normally, getting back to that baseline means either copy-pasting from an old repo or painstakingly recreating your stack by memory.

But the other day, while working in Cursor, I stumbled on a surprisingly effective (and frankly kind of magical) workflow: you can ask Cursor to generate a tutorial based on one of your existing projects — and then use that tutorial to recreate the entire project from scratch.

Here’s how it went down

I had just finished setting up my personal blog project. It was built the way I liked it: clean structure, Tailwind for styling, and the usual bells and whistles I reach for. I wanted to make it easy for others to recreate something similar — so I asked Cursor to write a tutorial for how to build a blog like mine.

That’s it. No prompt engineering, no complex instructions. Just: “Write a tutorial for how to build this blog.”

And what I got back was gold.

Cursor spit out a detailed, step-by-step guide — human-readable, sensible, and accurate. What’s wild is that I could then open a brand new project, paste that tutorial right back into Cursor, and it set up the entire project again, from scratch.

Same stack. Same structure. Same vibe. 100% match.

Why this is awesome

This is more than just a shortcut — it’s a whole new way to scale your favorite setups. Cursor essentially becomes a self-replicating assistant. If you’ve ever:

• Spent too much time re-wiring Supabase Auth
• Forgotten how you organized your file structure last time
• Re-installed the same libraries in the same order
• Wanted to share your workflow with a friend

…this changes the game.

Tips if you want to try it

• Start with a project you like — Clean it up a little if needed.

• Ask Cursor for a tutorial, not just an AI prompt — You want a human-readable guide for a reason.

  A tutorial gives you the flexibility to understand the full setup, including manual steps you’ll need to perform outside of the code editor — things like:

  • Creating a new Supabase project
  • Setting environment variables or database passwords
  • Registering or retrieving API keys
  • Configuring external services

  These are steps you don’t want AI automating — they involve sensitive credentials and platform-specific setup. A well-written tutorial makes these actions explicit, and easier to follow safely.

• Paste that tutorial into a blank Cursor project — Let it scaffold the basics.

• Save the tutorial — You can reuse it as a personal boilerplate or even share it with others.

What’s next?

I’m going to try this again soon for one of my Supabase Auth-based toy apps — something I build frequently. If this works as well as it did for the blog, I’ll basically never have to re-do my boilerplate setups again.

I’m also curious to compare the output if I ask Cursor to generate an AI prompt instead of a tutorial — but even with the human-readable guide, the results have been spot on.

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If you’re already using Cursor, give this a shot. You might be surprised how easily you can clone your dev brain — no copy/paste required.

And hey, if you try it and run into something interesting (or unexpected), I’d love to hear about it.

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Let me know if you’d like to:

• Add a sample tutorial output
• Include screenshots from Cursor
• Turn this into a Twitter/X thread or LinkedIn cross-post
• Give it a different tone (more playful? more technical?)