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Cursor’s Design Mode adds Annotate for developers iterating frontend and UI on a running app. On X, @cursor_ai (2115159585548021814; created_at 2026-10-27T19:11:57Z (2026-10-28 03:11 Asia/Shanghai)) said Annotate is new and lets agents take visual prompts—edit elements and draw on the page. Cursor’s docs place Design Mode in the browser inside the Agents Window. Related reading: Cursor cloud agents can build shareable canvases; Environments API hits beta.

Where to open Annotate

Selecting Annotate in the browser toolbar, or focusing the browser and pressing Cmd+Shift+D (Toggle Design Mode in the command palette), opens Design Mode. Annotate needs Cursor 3.24.18+; earlier builds show a pen icon labeled Design Mode instead.

Ways to direct the agent

Selecting an element opens a note (↑／↓ highlight parent／child). Shift+click adds more elements to the same note. Dragging marks an area—Shift locks one axis, Option／Alt draws from center; markup tools are Draw／Ellipse／Rectangle／Arrow, with Cmd+Z to undo. Double-clicking text edits it on the page (Return save, Esc revert); text edits always wait for Send. On a single-element note, Edit CSS properties opens a CSS inspector. After text or CSS edits, Dictate records a spoken note. Related reading: Cursor Agent SDK Is Out: Folders, Eval, and Deploy.

What the agent gets

Each note sends note text plus element details—tag, id, classes, attributes, CSS-style selector path, first 200 characters of visible text, size and position; six computed styles (color, background color, font size, font family, display, position); and in React／Vue／Svelte, component name and stack—plus a cropped screenshot of the element or marked-up area.

Batch edits

Batch edits starts off: Return on an element／area note sends it right away (Send note). With it on, notes collect as numbered pins; the toolbar shows Send with a count. Sending all pending notes also exits Design Mode. Text edits still wait for Send either way.

Canvas tabs (older Design Mode)

Canvas tabs keep the older pen-icon Design Mode: notes go straight to chat, Batch edits does not apply, and in-place text editing is unavailable—a different path from Agents Window Annotate. Related reading: Cursor Remote Control lets you check on and reply to your local agents from an iPhone.

Docs recommend Composer 2.5 for this flow (not required). These details come from Cursor’s docs and the official X post; Annotate has not been run on this site. Product details can change. For reference only.