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Cursor → Conductor MCP

Live hub: https://conductor-konstant.hectorsanchez.eu/connect.md
Bootstrap: https://conductor-konstant.hectorsanchez.eu/connect/bootstrap.md
Offline (cloned repo): docs/guides/connect/cursor.md

Agents: use absolute URLs above. Relative ../connecting.md links 401 on the live host.

Two surfaces

Surface What it is Headless?
cursor GUI IDE launcher No — opens the IDE
agent Cursor Agent CLI (~/.local/bin/agent) Yes — --print for non-interactive runs

Older docs said “Cursor has no headless mode.” That applied to the IDE launcher. The agent CLI supports headless config, MCP approve/list, and scripted runs.

# 1) Bootstrap token in THIS shell (length-check only)
#    https://conductor-konstant.hectorsanchez.eu/connect/bootstrap.md

# 2) Project MCP config (env-var reference — never a literal token)
mkdir -p .cursor
cat > .cursor/mcp.json <<'EOF'
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "conductor": {
      "url": "https://conductor-konstant.hectorsanchez.eu/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${CONDUCTOR_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN}"
      }
    }
  }
}
EOF

# 3) Approve + discover (no GUI)
agent mcp enable conductor
agent mcp list
agent mcp list-tools conductor

# 4) Smoke without cloning Conductor
curl -fsS https://conductor-konstant.hectorsanchez.eu/connect/mcp-smoke.sh | bash

# 5) NEW agent process (required — already-running sessions do not pick up mcp.json)
agent --print --force --trust --approve-mcps --sandbox disabled \
  --workspace "$PWD" \
  'Call Conductor MCP setup("engineering-lead","cursor") and summarize without secrets'

Approval layers (important)

  1. Server approval — agent mcp enable conductor and/or --approve-mcps
  2. Tool-call approval — ambient policy may still reject setup (User rejected MCP: conductor-setup)

If tool calls are rejected in headless mode, use the smoke script + documented HTTP tools/call path, or open the IDE for interactive MCP approval. Do not paste tokens into logs when curling /mcp.

Session reload gap

Writing .cursor/mcp.json does not inject Conductor into an already-running agent session’s MCP catalog. Start a new agent process after config.

IDE GUI path

Project: .cursor/mcp.json (same JSON as above) or user-level ~/.cursor/mcp.json.

Cursor interpolation is ${CONDUCTOR_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN}. Never paste a literal token into this file.

Launch Cursor from a shell that already exported the token (or configure your OS/session manager so the IDE inherits it). Reload/restart after MCP config changes.

Verify

curl -fsS https://conductor-konstant.hectorsanchez.eu/connect/mcp-smoke.sh | bash

Then call setup("engineering-lead", "cursor") from a session that has Conductor loaded (new agent process or IDE MCP panel).