OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there.

Let's review the current state of things:

- Terminal CLI agents are several orders of magnitude less $$$ to develop than forking an entire IDE.

- CC is dead simple to onboard (use whatever IDE you're using now, with a simple extension for some UX improvements).

- Anthropic is free to aggressively undercut their own API margins (and middlemen like Cursor) in exchange for more predictable subscription revenue + training data access.

What does Cursor/Windsurf offer over VS Code + CC?

- Tab completion model (Cursor's remaining moat)

- Some UI niceties like "add selection to chat", and etc.

Personally I think this is a harbinger of where things are going. Cursor was fastest to $900M ARR and IMO will be fastest back down again.

> with a simple extension for some UX improvements

What are the UX improvements?

I was using the Pycharm plugin and didn’t notice any actual integration.

I had problems with pycharm’s terminal—not least of which was default 5k line scroll back which while easy to change was worst part of CC for me at first.

I finally jumped to using iterm and then using pycharm separately to do code review, visual git workflows, some run config etc.

But the actual value of Pycharm—-and I’ve been a real booster of that IDE has shrank due to CC and moving out of the built in terminal is a threat to usage of the product for me.

If the plugin offered some big value I might stick with it but I’m not sure what they could even do.