Integration

Long-term memory for Cursor

Cursor's Composer is great inside a single thread but loses everything between them. Each new conversation in the same project starts from zero, and you end up re-explaining the architecture and your conventions over and over. With Engram in `~/.cursor/mcp.json`, Cursor remembers across every chat, every session, and every machine you sign into.

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Install

Three steps: sign up for an Engram API key, paste a BYOK LLM-provider key on /models, then drop the snippet below into Cursor.

Three steps to memory in your agent

Sign up. Free, no card. You'll land on a Getting Started page that walks the next two steps.
Add your LLM key. Engram is BYOK. Paste an OpenAI / Anthropic / Groq / Together / Fireworks key and we'll route every extraction and query call through your provider. You pay your provider directly. We never see your inference.
Paste the snippet below into your agent and restart it. Use Authorization: Bearer <api-key>with the API key from your portal.

engram-cursor: desktop editor + cursor-agent CLI

Same MCP config covers both the Cursor desktop editor and the cursor-agent CLI. Source: github.com/lumetra-io/engram-cursor.

Global (all projects + CLI): edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json (includes required header)

~/.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "engram": {
      "url": "https://mcp.lumetra.io/mcp/sse",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <api-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Per-project: create .cursor/mcp.json at your project root (overrides global for that project)

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "engram": {
      "url": "https://mcp.lumetra.io/mcp/sse",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <api-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Cursor and verify in Settings → MCP Servers. engram should show with a green dot. For the CLI, run cursor-agent mcp list + cursor-agent mcp list-tools engram.
Note: Cursor doesn't currently support ${env:VAR} interpolation in headers; the key sits in mcp.json as plaintext. For project-scoped configs, add .cursor/mcp.json to .gitignore.

What you can do once memory's wired in

Recall the decisions from last week's auth-library shootout
Avoid suggesting libraries you've already rejected, and remember why
Remember your preferred testing approach for this project (integration vs unit, mocked vs real)
Pull up the migration notes from the rename we did across 47 files

FAQ

Does this work in the cursor-agent CLI too?

Yes. Cursor reads the same `~/.cursor/mcp.json` for both desktop and CLI, so one config covers both surfaces.

Can I keep the API key out of `mcp.json`?

Yes. Cursor 2.6.21+ (March 2026) resolves `${env:VAR}` interpolation in `mcp.json` headers. Export `ENGRAM_API_KEY` in your shell environment and use `"Authorization": "Bearer ${env:ENGRAM_API_KEY}"` in the config. On older Cursor versions the key sits in plaintext in `mcp.json`; if you go that route with a project-scoped `.cursor/mcp.json`, add it to `.gitignore`.

Can I scope memory per project?

Yes. Put a `.cursor/mcp.json` in the project root with a project-specific bucket arg. Cursor uses the project config when present and falls back to global otherwise.

Related integrations

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