[kfajdsl]

Finding and jumping to all the places is usually easy, but non trivial changes often require some understanding of the code beyond just line based regex replace. I could probably spend some time recording a macro that handles all the edge cases, or use some kind of AST based search and replace, but cursor agent does it just fine in the background.

[skydhash]

Code structure is simple. Semantics is where it get tough. So if you have a good understanding of the code (and even when you don't), the overview you get from one of those tools (and the added interactivity) is nice for confirming (understanding) the needed actions that needs to be done.

> cursor agent does it just fine in the background

That's for a very broad definition of fine. And you still need to review the diff and check the surrounding context of each chunk. I don't see the improvement in metrics like productivity and cognitive load. Especially if you need to do serveral rounds.

[kfajdsl]

You mentioned grep-mode, which to my knowledge is just bringing up a buffer with all the matches for a regex and easily jumping to each point (I use rg.el myself). For the record, this is basically the same thing as VSCode's search tool.

Now, once you have that, to actually make edits, you have to record a macro to apply at each point or just manually do the edit yourself, no? I don't pretend LLMs are perfect, but I certainly think using one is a much better experience for this kind of refactoring than those two options.