Cursor Quickstart

April 13, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Cursor is a VS Code fork by Anysphere with built-in AI assistance. Engram connects to Cursor through MCP as a hosted remote server.

Setup

curl -fsSL https://engram-memory.com/install | sh

The installer writes Engram to your global Cursor MCP config at ~/.cursor/mcp.json, then writes Cursor rules so the agent knows to call engram_status first in new sessions.

Option 2: Manual Setup

  1. Create or edit your global Cursor MCP config at ~/.cursor/mcp.json:
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "engram": {
      "url": "https://www.engram-memory.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

If an older Engram config uses command and args with uvx, re-run engram install. The installer migrates the exact old Engram Cursor entry to the hosted url form above. Custom Cursor entries are left unchanged.

Cursor also supports project-level MCP config at .cursor/mcp.json. Use that only when you want the Engram server config checked into a specific repository. For most users, the global ~/.cursor/mcp.json file is the right default.

For local development:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "engram": {
      "url": "http://localhost:7474/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Only use the local URL after starting Engram locally:

python -m engram.cli serve --http
  1. Restart Cursor

First Time Setup

  1. Open a new chat in Cursor Agent mode
  2. Tell it: "Set up Engram for my team" to create a workspace
  3. Or: "Join Engram with key ek_live_..." to join an existing workspace

Usage

Once configured, Cursor's AI will:

  • Query team knowledge before working on code
  • Commit important discoveries automatically
  • Detect and surface conflicts between facts

Verification

engram verify

In your IDE: Ask your agent: "Call engram_status and tell me what it returns."

Expected output:

{"status": "ready", "mode": "team", "engram_id": "ENG-XXXXXX", "schema": "engram"}

Troubleshooting

  • Check config: cat ~/.cursor/mcp.json
  • Confirm the entry is under mcpServers.engram.url
  • If the entry still uses command: "uvx", re-run engram install or replace it with the hosted url entry above
  • Check Cursor's MCP/tools UI and confirm Engram is enabled
  • Approve Cursor's MCP tool call prompt when it asks to run engram_status
  • Restart Cursor after making changes
  • Ensure port 7474 is available if using local server
  • If Cursor searches files instead of calling engram_status, reload the MCP server or restart Cursor and try the explicit prompt above

See docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md for more help.