GitHub’s reliability problems are finally drawing a serious challenger. Cursor, the AI code editor now owned by SpaceX, launched Origin this week, a hosting service that stores repositories, supports collaborative browsing and editing, and handles pull requests.
The new platform is built to work beside GitHub, not replace it. Developers connect their GitHub org, pick the repositories they want to sync, and pull them in, so code can flow in both directions. Cursor promises agent-native features soon and says it is building an app ecosystem around the service.
Origin lands as GitHub endures its roughest stretch in years. The platform was hit by a worldwide outage lasting more than six hours on launch day, with error rates approaching 20 percent. LeadDev’s analysis of the company’s availability record counted 257 outages over the past year, and The Register logged repository downloads failing at a 50 percent error rate this week. High-profile users are leaving, according to LeadDev’s Charles Humble.
GitHub remains a formidable incumbent, with about 180 million developers and a 2007 founding under Microsoft’s ownership. But the arrival of Origin, weeks after SpaceX closed its roughly $60B acquisition of Cursor, signals the AI coding boom now extends to the infrastructure underneath it.
