Product design question
How would you improve Jules (coding agent) to compete with Cursor and Claude Code?
- Google DeepMind
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Competitive product improvement for a newer entrant against two established, well-loved coding tools.
How to approach it
- Clarify Jules's current position: a capable but less established coding agent compared to Cursor's mindshare and Claude Code's model-native advantage.
- Identify a defensible angle: deep integration with Google's broader ecosystem, such as tight Google Cloud, Workspace, or Android tooling integration that neither competitor offers as natively.
- Improve core reliability first, since trust in autonomous coding output is the baseline requirement before any differentiation matters.
- Invest in a specific workflow strength, such as fast, well-scoped task completion with clear, reviewable diffs, rather than trying to match Cursor's broad IDE feature set.
- Build proof points through visible benchmarks or case studies showing concrete task success rates compared to competitors.
- Define success as developer retention after first use and a measurable task-success rate, rather than just download or signup numbers.
What a strong answer includes
- Honestly frames Jules as a challenger, not assuming it can win on generic 'better AI' claims alone.
- Names a specific, defensible differentiator (Google ecosystem integration) instead of a vague improvement plan.
- Prioritizes reliability as the baseline trust requirement before layering on differentiation, showing sound sequencing.
- Avoids chasing feature parity with Cursor's broader IDE surface, focusing instead on a narrower strength.
- Uses retention and task-success rate as more meaningful metrics than raw adoption numbers for a challenger product.
Common mistakes
- Proposing to match Cursor and Claude Code feature-for-feature without a distinct angle.
- Ignoring reliability as the baseline requirement before any differentiation matters.
Likely follow-up questions
- What specific Google integration would you build first?
- How would you measure task-success rate compared to competitors?
- What would you do if reliability issues persisted despite improvements?
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More questions from Google DeepMind
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 7: AI UX and human oversight: design for a system that is wrong sometimes
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop