cursor-cli

The CLI ships the same agent runtime as the SDK and the editor — pick it when shell-script ergonomics beat a TypeScript program. The SDK is the right choice when you need streaming events, durable cloud reattachment, or programmatic subagents; the CLI is the right choice for one-off prompts and CI gates.

When to use

• One-off prompts in a terminal
• CI / GitHub Actions jobs that operate on a repo
• Headless scripted runs with structured output
• Quick local experiments before promoting to SDK code

Install & auth

• [[references/install]] — curl / PowerShell installers, $HOME/.cursor/bin
• [[references/auth]] — CURSOR_API_KEY, login flow

Interactive