Transcription
My name is David Andre, and here is how to build anything with Wind Surf.
So, what even is Wind Surf? It's a completely new way to build software. Unlike other AI tools, Wind Surf has multiple AI agents working together with you while you code. In this video, you will learn how to use Wind Surf to build apps with just one prompt.
The reason why Wind Surf is so powerful right off the bat is because it was developed by Codium, a company that created a free, open-source alternative to GitHub Copilot, which was the first AI-powered code completion tool that really started the wave. This means that the team behind Wind Surf has years of experience building AI coding tools, which is why Codium as a company is valued at $1.25 billion.
Now, this is the question that all of you have been waiting for: how does Wind Surf compare against Cursor? Personally, Cursor is what I use to develop my own AI startup, Vectal AI. By the way, I'm releasing it in the next few days, so check the description if you see the link; it's already out.
However, Wind Surf has something that Cursor does not, and that is Flows. This is a totally new way of working with AI, not just in terms of coding. Flows are basically a combination of AI agents and co-pilots, where AI agents can do things automatically by themselves, independently of what you are doing, and co-pilots work together with you, like auto-complete or suggesting edits. Flows are the combination of these two, and it's totally revolutionary. Flows are honestly a peek into the future; this is what work will look like in the next five years.
Now, sure, yes, there will be a time when AI can do everything better than any human, and you and I will not be involved in the process. However, in the meantime, it will be humans and AI agents working together, each filling in the gaps that the other lacks. AI is great at running long contexts but terrible at memory, so that's what the future of work will look like, and Wind Surf is the first taste of that.
Now, AI agents are not perfect. I know, shocker, right? But there is a reason why right now I would still choose a below-average programmer over some genius-level AI like Devon, which by the way was released a few days ago. If you want me to make a video on that, make sure to subscribe.
The reason why I would choose a below-average programmer is quite simple: humans are still much more powerful and agentic than AI. A human can look up a YouTube video, contact an expert, try a different way if some code doesn't work, learn more from the documentation, and do all of this by themselves without needing to be prompted or overseen. Even a below-average human can self-improve and take all of these actions, while an AI agent, at least in their current form, cannot do this.
Now, when it comes to working with these AI tools like Cursor or Wind Surf, there are several big dangers you must avoid.
Number one: overreliance on the AI. It's super tempting to just let the AI do everything and trust it completely, not checking the code it has written and all that stuff, but this is a huge mistake. It will cause you so much pain and slow you down. Don't be overly reliant on AI.
The second mistake I'm guilty of myself, especially when building Vectal AI, is that in order to go fast, you must go slow. If you want to rush ahead, it almost always will backfire, especially when you're working on a large project.
Now, yeah, if you want to build some quick MVP with Bolt or whatever, you can go ahead and create something in 20 minutes. But if you want to start your own AI startup like I did with Vectal AI, rushing ahead and not looking at what the AI is doing, not looking at the file structure and the code changes it's proposing, the packaging it's choosing, it's a very bad mistake. Again, if you want to go fast, sometimes it's better to go slow and do everything properly instead of trying to rush ahead.
The third mistake is refusing to learn. This might be one of the most common and destructive mindsets someone can have. Even if you're using AI, even if you're using ChatGPT, Cursor, Wind Surf, and all these different tools, you still should seek to learn and improve yourself.
So many people, especially from the no-code background, have this limiting belief that, "Oh, I'm not going to do the code; I'm just going to let AI do the code. I'm not going to even look at it; I'm not going to even try to understand what this function does." That is so destructive, and it will hold you back from building these incredible products and software that are now possible to build thanks to tools like Wind Surf.
So do not fall into these traps. Personally, speaking from experience, this is what I've learned over the past two months of developing Vectal, and hopefully, you can learn from my mistakes and not make these yourself.
If there's one thing I want you to take away from this video, it is that AI acceleration is real. The progress is speeding up right in front of our eyes. Let me give you three concrete examples: Wind Surf was released a month ago, okay? A month ago, Pro mode was released last week, and Devon, the AI agent that's a software developer, was released a few days ago.
We're literally witnessing the speed-up curve happening in front of our eyes, and most of you are still not paying attention. If you're not talking to people at the cutting edge, you will fall behind. It's as simple as that.
Let me give you a concrete example: if you were in the new society, you would have known about Wind Surf four weeks ago, and you could have had an insane advantage over everyone else. If you sleep for the next six months or twelve months, you will look back and say, "Wow, so much has happened, and I did nothing about it."
So start here. Start with this video, push through the friction, and let's build something with Wind Surf.
Now, the first step is to go to windsurf.com, and this explains the magic of Wind Surf really well. So first, let's start downloading the Wind Surf editor.
Now, while it's downloading, let's take a look at the Flows feature because this is really what makes Wind Surf magical. As they say, Flows are a new way for humans to work with AI.
The easiest way to understand it is as a combination of AI agents and co-pilots. Here is a simple example of what the Flows might look like: on the left, you have the user, the human, sending a prompt. Then Wind Surf says, "Sure, here's the plan," lays out a few steps, analyzes one file, edits the file, edits another file, and then you can accept or reject the changes.
So it's not like it's going to mess up your codebase without you knowing; you still have control over what it does. Then the developer, you, the human, can edit the file, and Wind Surf automatically notices that you've edited the file and says, "Okay, given these edits, this is what I will do," and it starts doing other stuff. Then you approve it again, and so on.
It's like looking at what you do and proactively doing the next things, trying to read your mind and predict what you are about to do. They summarize it nicely here: Flows allow the developer and the AI to operate on the same state at all times, creating a mind-meld experience beyond just an assistant.
The second feature that makes Wind Surf so popular and growing so rapidly is Cascade, which is basically chat 2.0, the future of chat. The first thing that makes Cascade powerful is the full contextual awareness of your codebase. So even if you have production-level codebases with tens of thousands of lines of code, it can still give you relevant suggestions because of the way the team works with embeddings and other proprietary methods that obviously they will not release, because that's why their company is worth $1.25 billion.
The second powerful feature of Cascade is its ability to suggest and run commands, so you don't have to use the terminal by itself. I know the terminal can be scary, right? Especially if you're new to programming, like, "Oh my God, a terminal!" With Wind Surf, you don't have to worry about that because the Cascade feature helps you do that. It suggests the terminal commands to run, and you just need to approve them.
So if it looks like it's going to delete your entire codebase, which honestly is not going to happen, but even if it's suggested that, you can still approve or reject it. This is why you should seek to understand the basics of the programming language you're using and the basics of terminal commands so that you know what it's asking you to do.
Moving to the third feature, it can pick up where you left off. With automatic reasoning of your explicit actions, Cascade can pick up your work where you left off. Again, it's analyzing what you're doing, and you can just say, "Continue my work," and it will continue based on the edits you were doing.
So let's say you start writing a function, and you're not really sure how to finish it. You have an idea; you can write a comment of what you should do, but you're struggling to find the abstraction, the logic, how to do it. You can say, "Continue my work," and there's a very high chance Cascade will just finish it off for you.
The next thing Cascade can do is multi-file editing. A lot of the time, if you change one file, especially if you're building something beyond an MVP, it requires you to change the imports or some functions in a different file. Cascade can do that automatically, looking through the files ahead of time.
So you don't have to think, "Okay, if I change this, will this break something on the other side of my codebase?" If you change, let's say, a front-end API, then you might have to change how the back-end API works. Cascade can do that automatically for you because of its thorough context awareness.
Now, there is still a bunch more to go through on this website, but I think the best way to do that is to just get started with Wind Surf. The first paid tier is $15, while Cursor is $20. This is already going to be a reason for a lot of people to try it. Personally, I would discourage you from just choosing products based on pricing, but if you don't have the budget, then $5 a month can go a long way.
Now, I think the bigger deal is that the free plan seems to be better than the Cursor free plan. The reason I'm saying that is because Cursor has been making their plan slowly worse because of the rapid growth, and I understand it now more than ever as I'm building Vectal. You cannot have a free tier, especially at the start, because of the compute costs.
So, Cursor has been making their free plan worse and worse, while Codium, at least for now with Wind Surf, seems to have maintained a pretty strong free plan. So if you're completely broke and still want to use these tools, Wind Surf might be the better option.
But personally, since I want to show you guys the real power of Wind Surf, I'm going to upgrade to the $15 a month plan right away so that you can have an accurate opinion of how good Wind Surf really is.
So let's click on "Select Plan," which will ask you to log in to Codium or create an account. If you don't have an account, click on "Sign Up" and simply create an account or just use "Sign Up with Google."
Now it's going to ask you a few questions, like where you currently work. I'm going to do Vectal AI. Again, guys, check the description; Vectal might finally be releasing in the next few days. This is what I've been working on for the past two months. It is the future of productivity—it's basically AI agents plus productivity software, you know, your task management list, if there were embedded AI agents inside of them.
So if you are using something like Notion to do this, forget about it. Vectal is going to be the future of work. How did you hear about Codium? Honestly, word of mouth. The word of mouth on Wind Surf is crazy. So many of you guys have commented for me to make a Wind Surf video, and here it is.
If you have other requests for me to make other videos, make sure to comment down below. Okay, so now I can select the $15 plan, and that will redirect you to the Stripe checkout.
Now I'm going to fill out my credit card details and be with you in a second.
After you fill out your credit card details, hopefully, you should see "Payment Successful." If not, then you should probably close YouTube and get back to work.
So let's open the file we downloaded and drag Wind Surf into your applications folder. If you're on Windows, then just follow the standard Windows process of downloading and installing apps. If you're able to install a video game, you can easily install Wind Surf, so don't use that as an excuse.
Alright, let's close that and now type in "Wind Surf" and open the app to get started.
So now, okay, this is interesting. You can choose to set up stuff from other IDEs, other code editors. Obviously, they use VS Code since Wind Surf is built on top of VS Code. It's kind of funny they use Cursor because that's their biggest competitor.
Yeah, I would recommend you add Wind Surf to PATH; this will just make it easier to run terminal commands to open Wind Surf. But I'm going to select "Import from Cursor" because that is my main coding tool right now. Maybe I'll switch from Cursor completely; we'll see.
So let's click on "Import from Cursor." Yes, settings, extensions—keep this checked in. Click on "Next."
Oh, in terms of the theme, right? So this is important. If you're choosing white, you're not going to make it, so you need to choose one of the dark themes. I'm just going to go with the default dark.
Then you need to sign in with the same account you purchased it on. Okay, so make sure to use the same account. It's going to redirect you to the website, and it's automatically going to log you in.
Then you need to click on "Open Wind Surf."
"Hi David, let's surf!" I like the surfing word; it's kind of nice.
So, okay, this is what Wind Surf looks like. On the left, you have Cascade, which you can think of as chat, right? Futuristic chat, but there are two different modes: there's the writing mode and the chat mode.
So, bro, I love this animation.
Anyways, this is the writing mode. When writing mode is turned on, Cascade will be able to make changes to your code. But if you turn on chat, it will just answer questions without changing your codebase.
So sometimes you want to be like, "Okay, what does this package do?" You just want to ask something without it messing up your files, so you turn on chat mode.
This, obviously, is still available inside of Cursor; you have a chat and composer, but here it's much more intuitive. The UI is cleaner and simpler.
Now, in terms of the models, this is super important: CLA 3.5 Sonet is the best right now, end of story. Maybe OpenAI will release, you know, GPT-4.5 in the next few days because right now it's the 12 days of OpenAI, the OpenAI Christmas, so they're releasing new features like crazy. We'll see.
But, you know, if you want to just go with a safe choice, go with the CLA 3.5 Sonet. These are only accessible on the $15 plan. If you don't have the $15 plan, you need to go with Cascade-based; it will automatically default to that, which is the free model from Wind Surf.
But honestly, these free models are nowhere near as good as the top models like CLA 3.5 Sonet, so make sure you have selected that.
Now, on the right, you can see the most important keyboard shortcuts. So, code with Cascade is Command + L. Remember this; we're going to use this.
Open command palette is Shift + Command + P. So if you do Shift + Command + P, it will open this palette, where you can create a new file, tell it anything you need to do, search files by name, and other stuff.
Or you can just press Command + P to find any file in your codebase, which is much faster than browsing through the folder on the right side.
Now, if you're wondering, "Okay, David, why is the Cascade on the left? Why are your files on the right?" That's because that's what my Cursor setup looks like, and I made it so that you can easily see all of the chat because, you know, my webcam is on the bottom right.
For you, most likely, the Cascade will be on the right, and the file explorer will be on the left. But don't panic; everything is the same; it's just a layout difference.
Anyways, what I'm going to do is open a folder. So let me just create an empty folder and click on "Open." Yes, I trust the authors of the folder because I am the author of the folder.
Now we have everything ready to start building. I've prepared a very simple prompt—literally like one sentence: "Create a simple web app using this sketch," which I'm going to attach right now and upload this to a webpage so I can view it.
So I've prepared a very simple sketch. I guess let me show you that first. Here's what it looks like: David's project overview.
So this would be a simple web app that's tracking the stats or how many people I have on each different aspect of my business. On YouTube, how many subscribers I have, maybe views, stuff like that.
New Society, how many members we have in New Society. By the way, if you're serious about AI, make sure to join; it's going to be linked below.
And Vectal AI, which right now is my main focus, you know, my startup, how fast it is growing. Again, I'm going to be releasing it in the next two or three days, so go to vectal.ai and see if it's released or not.
This simple web app will help me track how many people are on each and the growth patterns.
So anyways, I'm going to drag this image into the prompt, which by the way is another great thing.
So anyways, I'm going to click on "Add Images," and I'm going to select this image right here.
Make sure you're in the writing mode; otherwise, Cascade cannot write stuff, right? It cannot change the code if you're in chat mode, so make sure to select writing mode.
Let's just hit send, and this is the flow. Let the flow begin! I'm so excited about this because Flows—literally, this is what I've been talking about. If you're watching my videos, you know I've been talking about this kind of working with AI agents and humans for many months now, and Wind Surf is the first company to actually embrace that and build the product around it.
Now I'm trying to do the same with Vectal, but obviously, I still haven't released, and they have, so they're ahead of me. But I don't have $150 million of funding, so maybe that's my excuse.
Anyways, the first change that it did is created the index.html file with 72 lines of code. Again, we can approve each change or disapprove it if we don't like it.
So again, I can click on "Accept" or "Accept All Changes." It doesn't matter. Obviously, if you do "Accept All Changes," it will reflect among multiple files because right now, as you can see, it's creating style.css and script.js.
It's not being lazy, basically, which is super important when working with it, right? A lot of coding tools will give you a quick response and say, "Do you want me to write code?" and you have to say, "Yes, please write the code."
It's like they write a bit, and then you do the rest of the code. It's like, "Oh my God, finish the entire file!" Wind Surf at least seems to not have that problem.
As you can see, it already created three different files with a combined total of over 200 lines of code, and now it's waiting for my response to start the server on a background terminal.
So I'm going to accept this. It's running.
Okay, let's see. I've created a simple but modern web application based on your sketch. Boom! It is explaining the structure, and then we can navigate to localhost to open it.
Okay, let's see what's happening here. Cascade's changes are saved to your files; you can continue the workflow to review them.
Okay, so first we need to accept or reject all of them. Man, this UI is super easy to use.
I think if you're a beginner, Wind Surf might be more friendly. It's not going to be as easy as Bolt; Bolt is super easy to use. You know, just type in one prompt, two prompts, and you have a full-stack web app built for you.
But it's not a full IDE. Wind Surf, on the other hand, just like Cursor, is built on top of VS Code, which is one of the best, most sophisticated IDEs in the world.
Since they are a fork of VS Code, which a lot of people give them hate for, I think that's just short-term thinking. It's great because you will recognize this layout; you will recognize this user interface if you tried Cursor or VS Code before.
It's much easier to switch to these new forks that have built-in AI assistance and flows and AI agents, co-pilots, and all of that stuff since you recognize the flow. It's much easier to use.
But more importantly, what makes this such a good choice to use VS Code is that it has all of the features of VS Code. It has all these deep, like hundreds, thousands of programming features that you would need to build production-level software that simply Bolt does not have.
So I think Wind Surf, an easy way to explain it, is like a middle step between Bolt and Cursor. If you find Cursor too intimidating but find Bolt too limiting, Wind Surf might be the perfect choice for you.
Anyways, I'm going to accept all of these changes. Accept all.
On the right, you can see we have three different files from a single prompt. And guys, this is a pretty vague prompt, right? Like, yeah, we have the image as a reference, but this is just one sentence. This isn't anything advanced; you don't have to be an expert prompt engineer.
Right now, sure, still writing better prompts will get you better results. If you want to get better at prompt engineering, by the way, we have an amazing eight-module workshop in the New Society linked below.
But still, even with super simple prompts, if you're a complete beginner to prompt engineering, you can still get amazing results.
To show you that, let's go to localhost:8000. So let's copy that, let me switch to my browser, open a new tab, paste this in. Boom! There it is—a full, complete web app from a single prompt.
We can add the number of members, so as my startup keeps growing, maybe I'll be pressing here, like, you know, more and more of you that sign up to Vectal. Realistically, I'll probably automate it so I don't have to click it manually.
But check this out; we have a working text field. We have, you know, some attempt of a chart, but again, this is a single prompt, right?
So I can go back and tell it, "Okay, so maybe we need a way to lower the amount of members, and also we need a probably darker background, and we need to improve this chart."
So I'm going to say, "Make the following changes: the background of the app should be dark gray. We need a button to decrease the amount of members in each section, and then for the YouTube column, make sure to change this chart to something more serious and interactive."
Okay, let's send that.
In the meantime, while it's building, you can actually go and start changing stuff up, right? Let's say we want some margin here.
So I'm going to select this to four, and Cascade is working with you, right? So it should notice that I've changed the margin.
Let's see. Command + L, toggle Cascade.
Okay, so maybe this was small enough of a change—changing one number—for it to take any action upon it. But again, you can, let's say, like, first I'm going to accept these changes.
I want to implement, like, a padding here, right? So I'm going to do padding. I'm going to save it. I'm going to say, "Continue where I left off."
This is again the flow, right? So it should recognize where I changed it.
Yeah, I'll help you complete the CSS changes. Let me fix and improve the container styling.
So it's like it's paying attention to what you're doing, and it's trying to predict, like, "Okay, he's in the CSS, so he's probably trying to improve the styling. He's probably trying to make the app look nicer."
So it's going to analyze the CSS style, and you know, it added a lot more than just the padding.
So I can hit "Accept," and let's refresh the app. Boom! Already looks much better, right? The YouTube diagram is somewhat interactive.
You know, obviously, it's not perfect, but it was definitely better than the zigzag we saw before. We have the plus and minus buttons now, so even if members decrease, God forbid, you can change it up.
Our nodes are still in here, even though they're nonsense. We say, "Go to Vectal AI," and it's there.
So yeah, I think Wind Surf is really the best AI tool for beginners when it comes to programming.
So there it is; you can see just how powerful Wind Surf is with literally two prompts, and then I made some changes and said, "Continue where I left off," and it feels like it's reading my mind, honestly.
Now, again, if you want me to make a really deep, in-depth video on Wind Surf, then comment below, and I will make it.
With that being said, thank you guys for watching, and make sure to go to Vectal.ai and see if it's already released. Peace!