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Add Cranes to Cursor with the Cranes plugin or one link from Cranes, and what Cursor does on its own.

There are two ways to add Cranes to Cursor: the Cranes plugin, which also keeps your skills in Cursor, or just the connection.

What’s automatic, and what depends on Cursor

With the plugin Connection only
Your skills in Cursor Copied at the start of each session No
Your thinking on each prompt Cursor’s agent decides, guided by a rule the plugin adds Cursor’s agent decides
@cranes on its own checks the work Cursor’s agent decides, guided by the rule Cursor’s agent decides
Saving Offered; kept only on your yes Offered; kept only on your yes

Cursor can’t add Cranes’s guidance to each prompt by itself, so even with the plugin, Cursor’s agent chooses when to call Cranes. The plugin’s rule asks it to check before substantial work and on @cranes, and to stay out of general questions. See When Cranes comes in.

Install the plugin

The plugin is installed from a copy of Cranes’s code for now; it isn’t in a public plugin marketplace yet. From a checkout of the repository, in a terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.cursor/plugins/local
cp -R pikespeak/plugins/cursor/cranes ~/.cursor/plugins/local/cranes

Then restart Cursor. Copy the folder rather than linking to it. On Cursor’s Teams and Enterprise plans, Allow Local Plugin Imports has to be on.

Then sign in twice:

  1. For the tools: the first time Cursor uses Cranes, it asks you to sign in. You can also do it from Cursor’s MCP settings.
  2. For your skills: in a terminal, run python3 ~/.cursor/plugins/local/cranes/scripts/cranes.py login. Your browser opens Cranes; choose what it may use and choose Allow. This sign-in is shared with the Cranes plugins for Claude Code and Codex on your computer.

Your skills are copied into ~/.agents/skills, each named cranes- and the skill’s name. A copy you edit is never overwritten; Cursor’s agent offers to save your edit back to Cranes. A skill copied in as Cursor starts may show up only in your next session. If you also use the Claude Code plugin, a skill can appear twice, because Cursor reads Claude Code’s skills too.

Only the connection

  1. In Cranes, open the account menu, choose Connect your AI, then the Cursor card. Cursor opens and asks to add Cranes.
  2. Accept, then sign in to Cranes when Cursor asks, choose what it may use, and choose Allow.

Or add it yourself in an mcp.json file (.cursor/mcp.json for one project, ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all of them):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cranes": { "url": "https://usecranes.com/connect/mcp" }
  }
}

No client ID, secret, or key is needed. To make Cursor call Cranes more reliably in a repository, add the line under Have your AI use Cranes on its own to its AGENTS.md or Cursor’s rules. See When Cranes comes in.

In Cursor

Cursor 2.6 and later can show Cranes’s reader in the chat, and Cursor lists Cranes’s shortcuts. See Read your thinking inside your AI.

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