AI Tools you use to Build Apps With Cursor

In this article, We share the best AI Builder’s Stack to use to build apps with high quality. This stack covers Cursor, hosting platforms, authentication, databases, UI frameworks, and developer tools all you need to develop a high quality app. Each tool plays an important role, and together they create a amazing, production-ready code.

Let’s break down each tool in the stack.

1. Cursor – AI-Powered Code Editor

Cursor has become one of the most widely adopted coding assistants among developers. It works like VS Code but adds an intelligent AI layer on top. Inside Cursor, you can write prompts directly in your codebase, ask the AI to generate components, fix bugs, or even create entire features.

Why developers love Cursor:

• Understands your entire codebase context
• Can refactor functions or convert files instantly
• Helps you follow best practices without switching windows
• Saves hours that were previously spent debugging

Whether you’re building a backend API or a complex Next.js UI, Cursor accelerates the entire workflow.

2. Vercel a Hosting for AI Apps

Vercel is the most popular and strong platform for deploying Next.js apps, offering amazing fast and best performance, serverless functions, and native AI integrations. The platform is optimized for full-stack React apps and provides global edge deployment.

Key benefits:

• One-click deployment from GitHub
• Built-in caching, routing, and page optimization
• Serverless and edge functions for APIs
• Analytics, monitoring, and automatic scaling

When building with Cursor, Vercel becomes the ideal place to deploy production apps.

3. Fly.io – Distributed Backend Hosting

Fly.io is another great hosting platform, especially for developers who need global distribution, private networks, or custom Docker deployments.

Fly.io is perfect for hosting:

• Databases
• Custom APIs
• Containers
• Background workers

It complements Vercel extremely well since Vercel handles frontend and serverless, while Fly.io handles persistent backend workloads.

4. Next.js The Frontend + Backend Framework

Next.js is the backbone of most modern web applications. With features like server components, caching, file-based routing, and edge rendering, it simplifies everything from building UI to handling API routes.

Cursor also understands Next.js extremely well, making the development process even smoother.

Why Next.js remains the standard:

• Powerful server-side rendering
• App Router for structured routing
• Built-in API endpoints
• Great support for streaming & AI features

If you’re building modern AI apps, Next.js is the most efficient choice.

5. Vercel AI Gateway – Manage AI Costs & Performance

As AI usage grows, so does the need for better control over tokens, cost, caching, and model routing. Vercel AI Gateway sits in front of your LLM providers and gives you:

• Usage analytics
• Automatic caching of prompts
• Rate limiting
• Model fallback and organization-level control

It also works perfect with OpenAI, Anthropic, and any LLM you like. For production AI apps, this tool is perfect.

6. Shadcn UI + Tailwind CSS – The Modern UI Foundation

Shadcn UI has quickly become the industry standard for building beautiful, accessible UI components using Tailwind CSS. Unlike traditional libraries, Shadcn components are “copy-and-own,” meaning you fully control the code.

Benefits:

• Completely customizable
• Developer-friendly
• Perfect for dashboards, SaaS apps, admin panels
• Pairs well with Next.js and Cursor

Tailwind makes styling faster, while Shadcn offers production-ready components like dialogs, forms, and navigation.

7. Convex – Real-Time Backend & Database

Convex is an innovative backend platform that replaces REST APIs, GraphQL, and databases with a simpler real-time data platform.

Key features:

• Real-time sync
• Automatic reactivity
• Server functions instead of REST endpoints
• Built-in database with type safety

Instead of setting up a database manually, Convex gives you an instant, reactive backend that works beautifully with React and Next.js.

8. Clerk – Authentication & User Management

Clerk handles modern authentication with simplicity. It provides very simple clean and modern UI components for:

• Sign-in / Sign-up
• Multi-factor authentication
• User dashboards
• Organization management

Clerk integrates easily with Next.js, Vercel, and Convex, making it easy to add secure authentication without any issue.

9. GitHub Source Control & CI

GitHub is essential in any builder’s stack. With GitHub, we can collaborate with team, manage branches, create pull requests (PRs), and automate deployments.

Why it's so important:

• Version control
• Secure collaboration
• Automated deployments to Vercel
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD

Cursor also integrates with GitHub to understand your full repository context.