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Cursor runs inside ADE as one of its five agent providers, alongside Claude Code, Codex, Factory Droid, and OpenCode. ADE drives Cursor’s agent through the official Cursor SDK — ADE owns the lane scope, permissions, and system prompt; the SDK owns the model and tool execution.

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Connect Cursor

Cursor chat authenticates with an API key. Add a Cursor API key in Settings → AI, or set CURSOR_API_KEY in the environment ADE launches from — ADE accepts either. Once connected, ADE discovers Cursor’s available models and they appear in the model picker alongside every other provider. Pick one in any chat header to route that session through Cursor.
When a Cursor key is configured, ADE runs the official @cursor/sdk in a Node worker pool. The worker creates or resumes a Cursor SDK agent with the selected model in the active lane’s worktree, and routes chat turns through SDK runs. Sessions are pooled and reused, SDK events map to ADE’s chat event model, and interrupts cancel the run. Because the ade CLI is on PATH, Cursor agents can call ADE’s lane, git, PR, and action tools.
ADE shows Cursor’s status in Settings → AI:
StatusMeaning
Connected (green)Cursor API key found and ready.
Not authenticated (amber)Cursor API key is missing or invalid.
You can also launch the cursor-agent CLI as a tracked terminal session in the Work tab. ADE probes cursor-agent for CLI-only models and merges them into the picker, so the chat-vs-CLI distinction stays clear. This needs the cursor-agent binary on your PATH.
Kick off Cursor’s hosted cloud agents from ADE and follow them in a lane:
ade cursor cloud agents list --text
ade cursor cloud agents create --repo https://github.com/owner/repo --prompt "fix flaky test" --auto-pr
The chat panel can open a cloud agent as an ADE chat (replies still run in the cloud) or jump to it on cursor.com.
  • Authentication failed — add a Cursor API key in Settings → AI, or set CURSOR_API_KEY in ADE’s launch environment.
  • Models not appearing — discovery serves last-known-good rows and revalidates in the background. If Cursor was just connected, restart ADE or refresh in Settings → AI.
  • Session errors — confirm the key is valid and the selected model is available; check developer logs at Settings → Developer → Log file.

AI providers

Connect each agent and set defaults.

Agent chat

Run Cursor in a lane and compare it with other providers.