Guides for Cursor

Cursor is a closed-source coding agent from Anysphere. It runs as a desktop editor built on VS Code (with the Agents Window), a CLI, and cloud agents. The surfaces share a name and a codebase, not always a loader: a skill that appears in the editor can be missing in the CLI, and a hook that runs locally can be absent in the cloud. These guides name the surface and date the behaviour.

Run Cursor → About Cursor; in the CLI, agent --version. Cursor removed Memories in 2.1.x, so the memory answer below starts there; the legacy-rules report is from 3.24.12. Current CLI docs call the command agent; older posts say cursor-agent.

Checked against Cursor's documentation, changelog, help pages and forum reports on 27 October 2026.

Start with the problem#

Does Cursor read AGENTS.md? — Root and nested files, CLAUDE.md through the same door, why nested rules attach to a file read, and why they can drop after summarization.

Why your Cursor rule isn't applied — Project rules, User Rules, team and plugin rules, the four frontmatter types, and which copy is actually running.

Why your Cursor skill isn't showing up — Skill roots, SKILL.md, the chat-start snapshot, symlinks, and what a subagent inherits.

Where did my Cursor chat go? — Workspace identity, the editor index versus the Agents Window, forks and side chats, and the CLI's separate history.

Why Cursor keeps asking for permission — Run modes, allowlists, the user and project permissions.json files, and the CLI's own permission system.

Why your Cursor hook doesn't fire — Where hooks load, why an event never matches, what fails open, and what additional_context cannot deliver.

Cursor says MCP is connected, so why aren't the tools there? — Configured, connected, discovered, available, allowed and chosen are different states, and the check depends on the surface.

If a command ran when it should have been blocked, check permissions, then hooks.

Does Cursor have memory?#

No memory feature in the editor's agent today, but memories saved before 2.1 can still be applied without a UI. The Memories feature was intentionally removed starting in Cursor 2.1.x, according to a Cursor staff reply in the memories cleanup thread on 7 January 2026. The old Memories UI is gone, and Cursor's docs have no editor memory page; their "memory" pages cover Grok Bot and the Agent SDK, not the editor's coding agent.

Old data can outlive the feature. An open report on 3.24.12 says account rules from older versions can still be injected into every chat while Customize → Rules leaves them out; staff said on 26 October 2026 that this is most likely on accounts that used the old Memories feature and suggested opening a new window with no folder, then checking Customize → Rules (thread). If old instructions keep appearing, that is the cleanup path to try first.

What makes Cursor repeat a preference is a standing instruction: AGENTS.md, a project rule, or User Rules in Customize → Rules. Past work is in chat history. Neither is a memory store. The persistent memory guide compares the cross-tool options, including what Cursor's editor does not have.

When the chat gets long#

For what /summarize does in Cursor, see the compaction guide.

Other guides#

• Hand off work between Claude Code and Codex — the written baton for work that moves between tools, sessions or machines.
• Persistent memory for Claude Code and Codex — the hub for the memory question across agents.
• The Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, GitHub Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI and Qwen Code guides cover the same problems in those tools.