Cursor Anysphere Software Engineer Interview Technical Phone Screen
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passed technical phone screen for Cursor. Anysphere is the parent company that develops Cursor (the AI editor that you use) ## The task Cursor has experienced a rapid growth in developer
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passed technical phone screen for Cursor. Anysphere is the parent company that develops Cursor (the AI editor that you use) ## The task Cursor has experienced a rapid growth in developers using the completions API and other endpoints. We are building a rate limiter You have a list of data (in memory for now) of the form [user_id, request_url, body_size (bytes), timestamp (seconds)] and need to complete the below tasks ### Task 1: Enforce a rate limit for one endpoint Enforce a rate of 3 requests/second for the v1/completions/standard endpoint. Do not count "denied requests" for the calculation. Other endpoints do not have a rate limit enforced this iteration Rate limits are enforced on the per user basis. Read the problem requirement to understand why! ### Task 2: Rate Limiter Interface Suppose that 10 other developers come to you to build a rate limiter for their endpoints. You need to extend your interface to support patterns like this: * Rate limit the v1/completions/chunked endpoint at 7 requests/minute * Allow 5 requests/second to the v2/completions/chunked endpoint * Allow requests to the v1/completions/chunked endpoint if the total request byte size doesn't exceed 100 in the past minute * Allow 7 requests/hour total across all endpoints * The rate limit rule from task 1 If all the above checks are satisfied, then you count that request. If even one is denied, don't process and don't count for the calculation ## Reflection * Goal from the interviewer was to get a working solution. Don't overindex on time and space complexity optimization * First part was pretty straightforward in terms of implementing the provided stub. Just use the simple way * Second part required some thinking and I ended up going with an interface and 2 concrete classes to support the types of rate limits developer want. I got like 95% of the way through and had the primitives ready. I just didn't get time ot add all the initializations in the main function, but interviewer wasn't too concerned about that. They cared about how I'd run the main function on all the rate limiters and decide allow or deny. * I received followup in an hour after the interview and moved to
next round * Keep communicating your thoughts to the interviewer and involve them like a stakeholder
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About Cursor Anysphereco Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Cursor Anysphereco. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Cursor Anysphereco are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Cursor Anysphereco interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Cursor Anysphereco reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Cursor Anysphereco Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Cursor Anysphereco reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.