AI-Driven Code Explanation and Documentation

In this lesson, we’ll explore how Cursor can help us understand and document code. Whether we’re reviewing someone else’s work, returning to an old project, or trying to get up to speed quickly, Cursor’s AI features can save time and reduce confusion.

We’ll learn how to:

• Use Cursor to explain the selected code in plain language.

• Understand complex logic by asking focused questions.

• Generate comments and docstrings using the assistant.

• Produce project-level documentation and summaries with minimal manual effort.

Instead of writing everything from scratch, we’ll focus on how Cursor can assist us in understanding what code does and how to document it clearly for ourselves and others.

Starting with a code snippet that needs explanation

Let’s say we come across the following piece of code in a project we didn’t write ourselves. Before making any changes, we want to understand what it does.