Capture Cursor work

Use this guide to capture commit Attribution for local Cursor desktop Agent and Tab work. Successful Agent Write calls can also emit implicit-accept Developer decision Facts.

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Evidence captured

Each Cursor event produces this evidence: The adapter uses Cursor’s conversation_id as the Session identifier.

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Before you begin

Install the CLI and get a capture token with Configure local capture. You also need the Cursor desktop app and its cursor launcher. Start and close Cursor once so that ~/.cursor exists.

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Install capture

1. Connect the CLI to the Sediment endpoint:
   sediment login https://sediment-api.example.com --capture
   
2. Install capture in the repository:
   sediment install --user-id alice /path/to/repo
   
   Replace alice with your developer identifier. The installer preserves other commands in ~/.cursor/hooks.json and adds native user hooks for:
   • postToolUse, matched to successful Agent Write calls
   • postToolUseFailure, matched to failed Agent Write calls
   • afterTabFileEdit, for accepted Tab edits
3. Open the enrolled repository in Cursor:
   cursor /path/to/repo
   
   The hooks read ~/.sediment/env.sh directly, so you don’t need to load it or restart Cursor. After you upgrade Sediment, rerun the install command with the same flags.

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Configure Developer decisions

Each successful Agent Write sends a Developer decision with decision=accept and explicit=false. It records that the tool succeeded, not that a person approved it. The recorded time is when the hook received the event, because Cursor supplies no execution time. The hooks read the endpoint, token, and developer identifier from the generated env.sh, as data; they never run it as a script. If another system owns the environment, install with --no-env, and set SEDIMENT_OTLP_ENDPOINT and SEDIMENT_INGEST_TOKEN in Cursor’s environment. Then fully quit Cursor, and launch it from that shell. Without SEDIMENT_OTLP_ENDPOINT, the hooks still mark commits but send no decisions.

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Inference calls and Edit observations

Cursor doesn’t support either. Sediment hasn’t verified an identifier that links Cursor’s hooks to its model requests, so don’t treat Cursor’s gateway requests as part of the same Session. The hooks don’t receive the applied text or the file’s state at Session end that an Edit observation needs.

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Verify capture

Remote checks need a separate operator login.

1. Check the configuration:
   sediment doctor --fetch /path/to/repo
   
2. Ask Cursor Agent, not Tab, to create a small file with its Write tool, and commit the file.
3. Read the commit’s Session note:
   git notes --ref=refs/notes/sediment show HEAD
   
4. Copy the session_id from the entry with tool: "cursor", and check that Session on the server:
   sediment doctor /path/to/repo --agent cursor --session-id '<session_id>'
   
   The check needs a Cursor Developer decision in that Session and its entry in the note.

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Limits and troubleshooting

• The integration covers the local Cursor desktop app only. It doesn’t configure Cursor Cloud Agents, Cursor CLI, Enterprise cloud-distributed hooks, or the Sediment fleet bundle.
• The hooks don’t send prompts, model output, edit text, file content, tool output, or your Cursor account email.
• Without conversation_id, the hooks record nothing. Without tool_use_id, a successful write marks the Session but sends no decision.
• The hooks find the repository from the edit’s absolute path, or else from the event’s cwd or workspace roots. If several workspace roots are different repositories, the hooks skip the marker and log ambiguous repository directory.
• Hook and delivery failures never block Cursor. The hooks write a short diagnostic to standard error and skip that evidence.
• If env.sh is missing or malformed, a successful write still marks the Session but sends no decision, and doctor reports FAIL. Rerun sediment install to regenerate it.
• If doctor --fetch reports a notes-ref failure, follow Repair a notes ref.

Developer decisions by agent harness defines the canonical Cursor decision unit and missing-signal behavior.