Telos Is the Cursor for Product Management

If you’ve used Cursor, you know the moment it clicks.

You’re working in a codebase, and instead of carefully explaining every file, every function, every architectural decision to an AI assistant, it just… knows. It understands your project structure. It sees the patterns in your code. It generates suggestions that actually fit how your system works.

That feeling—of an AI that understands your context instead of requiring you to explain it—is what’s been missing from product management tools. Until now.

The Cursor Insight

What made Cursor different from ChatGPT-in-an-editor wasn’t the underlying model. It was two things: context at your fingertips and an interface built for the workflow.

Everything indexed, nothing to hunt for

Cursor indexes your entire codebase. Every file, every function, every dependency—it’s all right there. When you need to understand how authentication works, you don’t manually open twelve files. Cursor already knows. It can navigate your code, find the relevant pieces, and synthesize them for you.

This is the magic. You’re not copying and pasting code into a chat window. You’re not explaining your project structure. The AI already has it all, and it can traverse your codebase the way you would—just faster.

Chat on one side, code on the other

Then there’s the interface. Cursor puts your conversation with AI on one side and your actual code on the other. When the AI suggests changes, you see them applied in real-time. You’re not copying from a chat window and pasting into your editor. The AI edits your code directly, and you approve or refine.

This isn’t just convenient—it fundamentally changes the workflow. You’re collaborating with AI on your actual work product, not translating between a chat interface and your tools.

The result? Developers stopped spending half their time explaining context and navigating files. They started spending that time actually building.

Product Management Has the Same Problem

Now think about product management.

Every time you use ChatGPT or Claude to help with a PRD, you’re starting from scratch. You paste in context. You explain your architecture. You describe what was discussed in last week’s meeting. You summarize the Slack thread where the requirements changed.

And even then, the output is generic. It doesn’t know your system’s constraints. It doesn’t understand the technical debt your team discussed. It hasn’t seen the customer feedback that shaped the requirements.

Sound familiar? It’s exactly the problem Cursor solved for coding.

What Context-First Product Management Looks Like

Telos takes the Cursor approach to product management—both the context layer and the interface.

All your context, indexed and accessible

Just like Cursor has your entire codebase at its fingertips, Telos has your entire product context aggregated and ready:

Slack conversations: Every thread where @telos was tagged, every discussion about requirements, every decision made in channels. You don’t dig through Slack—Telos already has it.

Meeting transcripts: Every call Telos joined, every action item discussed, every technical concern raised. You don’t scrub through recordings—Telos already knows what was said.

Your codebase: Your architecture, your file structure, your technical constraints. Telos understands your system the same way Cursor understands your code.

Your documents: PRDs, design docs, specs—uploaded once and incorporated into Telos’s understanding.

When you need to know “what did we decide about the authentication flow?”, you don’t hunt through four Slack channels and a meeting recording. You ask Telos. It navigates your context the way Cursor navigates your code.

Chat on one side, your work on the other

Here’s where the Cursor parallel gets even stronger.

Telos gives you the same side-by-side interface, but for product artifacts. Your conversation with AI on one side. Your actual tickets, PRDs, or mockups on the other.

When Telos generates a Jira ticket, you see it take shape in real-time. When it drafts a PRD, you watch the document build. When it creates a diagram, it appears right there. You’re not copying AI output from a chat window into Jira or Confluence. Telos edits your actual work product directly.

You refine through conversation: “Add acceptance criteria for the error states.” “Include the technical constraints from the GitHub discussion.” “Break this into three smaller tickets.” Each change happens live, on the artifact itself.

This is the workflow Cursor proved works for code. Telos brings it to product management.

Why Context Changes Everything

Here’s a concrete example.

Without context (generic AI): You prompt: “Create a user story for adding dark mode support” You get: A generic dark mode user story that could apply to any application

With context (Telos): Telos knows:

Your team discussed dark mode in a Slack thread last Tuesday
The designer shared concerns about your current color token system
Your frontend uses Tailwind with a custom theme configuration
There’s an open GitHub issue about CSS variable inconsistencies
Last sprint’s retro mentioned dark mode as a customer request

So when you ask for a dark mode user story, you get:

Acceptance criteria that reference your actual color token system
Technical notes about the Tailwind configuration that needs updating
Links to the relevant Slack discussion and GitHub issue
Story points estimated based on similar work your team has done

That’s not a generic output with your company name pasted in. It’s a specification that understands your product.

The Shift from Writing to Curating

Cursor didn’t make developers stop coding. It made them focus on the parts of coding that matter—architecture decisions, problem-solving, code review—while handling the mechanical translation of intent into syntax.

Telos does the same for product managers.

You still own the product decisions. You still need judgment about what to build and why. But the translation of those decisions into documentation, tickets, and specifications? That’s handled.

The PM role shifts from “person who writes everything down” to “person who makes sure the right things get built.” That’s what the job was supposed to be anyway.

Why Now?

Two things had to happen for this approach to work:

LLMs got good enough. The underlying models needed to be capable of understanding context and generating nuanced outputs. That’s only been true for the past year or so.

Integration became possible. Building a tool that connects to Slack, GitHub, Zoom, Jira, and Linear—and synthesizes information across all of them—required APIs and infrastructure that didn’t exist a few years ago.

Cursor proved the model works. Context-aware AI isn’t just marginally better—it’s categorically different. The same is true for product management.

What PMs Actually Do With Recovered Time

When you stop spending 40-60% of your time on context gathering and documentation, what do you do instead?

More customer research. Actually talking to users instead of writing about what you think they want.

Deeper technical collaboration. Working with engineering on architecture decisions instead of just throwing specs over the wall.

Strategic thinking. Considering where the product should go next quarter, not just what needs to ship this sprint.

Better decision-making. Having time to think through trade-offs instead of rushing to document decisions that were made in a meeting you’re still trying to summarize.

This isn’t about working less. It’s about working on the right things.

The Cursor Generation of Product Tools

Cursor wasn’t just a better code editor. It defined a new category: AI-native development tools that combine indexed context with a workflow-native interface.

Telos is building the same thing for product management. Not AI bolted onto existing workflows, but a tool designed from the ground up around two insights:

Context should be aggregated, not assembled. Your Slack, meetings, code, and docs should be indexed and accessible—not scattered across tabs you manually search.
AI should edit your work, not generate text you copy. The side-by-side interface isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s what makes AI feel like a collaborator instead of a separate tool.

The product managers who use Notion and Confluence and Jira will keep using them. But they’ll use them differently—Telos generates the artifacts, syncs them to your tools, and you refine through conversation rather than starting from blank pages.

Just like developers still use VS Code and their terminal. They just use them alongside Cursor, which handles the parts that benefit from context-aware, workflow-native AI.

Try the Cursor Feeling for Product Management

If you’ve used Cursor, you know what it feels like when AI actually has your context. When you don’t have to explain your codebase. When you can just ask, and it navigates to what matters. When changes happen in your actual code, not in a chat window you copy from.

Telos brings that same feeling to product management:

All your context indexed—Slack, meetings, code, docs—so you never hunt for information
Side-by-side interface where AI edits your tickets, PRDs, and mockups directly
Conversation-driven refinement on your actual work product

It’s the difference between “AI that helps you write” and “AI that works the way you work.”

Ready to see what context-aware product management feels like? Book a demo and we’ll show you Telos with your actual tools and workflows.