Hindsight for Cursor CLI

Long-term memory for Cursor CLI — remembers your projects, preferences, and past sessions across every conversation.

How it works

Four Cursor CLI hooks keep memory in sync automatically:

Requirements

• Cursor CLI v0.45+ with hooks support
• Python 3.9+ (for hook scripts; stdlib only — no pip install required)
• Hindsight: Hindsight Cloud or local hindsight-embed

Installation

Sign up free at ui.hindsight.vectorize.io for a Hindsight Cloud API key — or run a local server.

pip install hindsight-cursor-cli

Then run the installer once:

# Hindsight Cloud
hindsight-cursor-cli install --api-url https://api.hindsight.vectorize.io --api-token your-api-key

# Local daemon (hindsight-embed) — omit the flags
hindsight-cursor-cli install

The installer:

1. Copies the hook scripts to ~/.cursor/hooks/cursor-cli/
2. Writes ~/.cursor/hooks.json (merged with any existing entries) with absolute paths to the scripts
3. Seeds ~/.hindsight/cursor-cli.json if it doesn't exist (drop your hindsightApiToken here later)

Restart Cursor CLI to load the hooks. If memories are not recalled or retained, check that ~/.cursor/hooks.json exists and that python3 is on $PATH from your shell.

Uninstall

hindsight-cursor-cli uninstall

This removes the hook scripts and strips Hindsight's entries from ~/.cursor/hooks.json. Your personal config at ~/.hindsight/cursor-cli.json is preserved.

Configuration

Default config lives in ~/.cursor/hooks/cursor-cli/settings.json. For personal overrides stable across updates, create ~/.hindsight/cursor-cli.json:

{
  "hindsightApiUrl": "https://api.hindsight.vectorize.io",
  "hindsightApiToken": "your-api-key",
  "bankId": "my-cursor-memory"
}

Configuration options

Environment variable overrides

All settings can also be set via environment variables:

export HINDSIGHT_API_URL=https://api.hindsight.vectorize.io
export HINDSIGHT_API_TOKEN=your-api-key
export HINDSIGHT_BANK_ID=my-project
export HINDSIGHT_RECALL_TIMEOUT=30
export HINDSIGHT_DEBUG=true

How memory works

Recall — before each prompt, Hindsight searches your memory bank for facts relevant to what you're about to ask. Found memories are injected as additional_context so the agent has continuity across sessions.

Retain — after configured turns and again when the session ends, Cursor's conversation transcript is stored to Hindsight. The memory engine extracts facts, relationships, and experiences — so you don't need to re-explain your stack, preferences, or past decisions.

Dynamic bank IDs

To keep separate memory per project:

{
  "dynamicBankId": true,
  "dynamicBankGranularity": ["agent", "project"]
}

This creates banks like cursor-cli::my-project automatically, using either CURSOR_PROJECT_DIR (Cursor's env var) or the first entry of workspace_roots from the hook's common input fields.

To share memory across all worktrees of the same repo, use gitProject instead of project:

{
  "dynamicBankId": true,
  "dynamicBankGranularity": ["agent", "gitProject"]
}

Troubleshooting

No "Hindsight is active" note on session start: run with "debug": true (or HINDSIGHT_DEBUG=true) and check stderr.

Memory not appearing: enable debug mode ("debug": true) and check that HINDSIGHT_API_URL points to a reachable server.

Hooks not firing: check that ~/.cursor/hooks.json is valid JSON and contains the four hook entries. Cursor CLI requires a session restart to pick up new hooks.

Development

cd hindsight-integrations/cursor-cli
uv sync
uv run pytest tests/ -v

The tests mock the HTTP client, the stdin/stdout pipe, and the file-based state. No live Hindsight server is required.

License

MIT