GitHub has been developers' preferred code hosting platform for years. However, in recent times the platform has faced widely reported outages and performance degradation, and as it fails, Cursor is ready to capitalise on the opportunity.
The artificial intelligence startup, now officially part of SpaceX, launched Origin this week, a new code hosting platform designed to perform all the functions developers typically use in GitHub: collaboratively work on codebases, explore and edit them, manage pull requests (edits proposed by other users) and store them in repositories.
This seems a natural step for Cursor, whose main focus so far has been selling automated web development services through its AI Code Editor. Cursor also indicated that it will soon have "native agent" features available for Origin, although it has not shared many details. The company stated that it is building a broader "ecosystem of applications" to support wider coding efforts within Origin.
Interestingly, using Origin does not require a user to stop using GitHub. In fact, Origin is designed to allow developers to work alongside GitHub and exchange code between the two platforms in an interoperable way. "Your GitHub repositories can coexist with those hosted by Cursor," Cursor noted in its blog. "Connect GitHub to Cursor, choose your organisation, and you will see the repositories you can synchronise. Select one and Cursor incorporates it."
The launch of Origin coincides with ongoing frustration over a perceived decline in GitHub's services. In fact, on the same day Cursor launched its new platform, GitHub suffered a rather prolonged global outage. For over six hours, site functions reported degradation, with an error rate of approximately 20 per cent globally.
This is not the first time this has happened. Earlier this year, following a series of outages, GitHub announced new measures to satisfy dissatisfied developers as its availability problems appeared to escalate. More generally, the platform suffered 257 outages during the past year, according to a recent LeadDev analysis. These persistent problems have generated "a visible exodus of high-profile users," wrote Charles Humble, a LeadDev reporter.
However, if Cursor wants to compete with GitHub, it will have a difficult job ahead. According to GitHub metrics, approximately 180 million developers were using its platform as of October last year. The platform, founded in 2007 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012, continues to be the world's largest source code host.
