arXiv:2610.20618v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI-powered integrated development environments (IDEs) are increasingly positioned as practical tools for software development, integrating AI assistance into everyday activities such as editing, refactoring, and debugging. However, how developers evaluate AI IDEs as working environments, what frictions shape their adoption, and which aspects of the experience matter most in everyday use remain underexplored. Prior evidence on adoption and use is mainly controlled tasks, small interview samples, and short observation windows, which offer limited visibility into longitudinal, community-driven experience and the workflow drift that emerges in everyday practice. To bridge this gap, we conduct a large-scale longitudinal study of Cursor, a prominent AI-native IDE, through its official public forum, where users report bugs, request features, and discuss everyday use. Our analysis covers 14,714 forum posts collected over more than two years. We find that discussion is dominated by workflow-critical mechanisms (71%) such as context indexing, model routing, and agent workflows, which are also the main sources of both perceived value and frustration. Negative experiences center on usability, pricing, and dependability, including installation and setup, usage limits and consumption, crashes, and latency. Over time, the focus of friction shifts from early access and setup barriers toward pricing, robustness, and sustained workflow reliability.