Automated Documentation and Code Explanation

Well-documented code is essential for long-term project maintainability. It allows new team members to get up to speed quickly, helps us understand our code when we return to it months later, and is a crucial reference for collaboration. However, writing and maintaining documentation is often treated as an afterthought because it can be a tedious and time-consuming.

Cursor can transform documentation from a chore into an integrated part of our development workflow. By leveraging its deep understanding of our codebase, we can automate the generation of everything from in-line comments and function docstrings to comprehensive project READMEs. This lesson will teach us how to use Cursor to explain and document our Markdown Notes App.

Using Cursor to explain unfamiliar code

Before we can document code, we must first understand it. This is especially challenging when working with a legacy codebase or a complex part of an application we didn’t write ourselves.

Suppose we are a new developer on the team, and we need to understand the /register endpoint in our app/auth/routes.py file. Instead ...