exploring-cursor-history
Installation
SKILL.md
Exploring Cursor History
Cursor stores IDE conversations in SQLite (state.vscdb), with the global DB as the single source of truth — workspace DBs only hold legacy metadata (pre-3.0). The CLI (agent) stores its own sessions under a root that defaults to ~/.cursor. Current official releases are Desktop 3.19 / CLI 2026.09.02-c22c1a3; local schema evidence is Desktop 3.15.6 and CLI through 2026.08.04 because current live generation did not complete.
Storage locations
IDE paths are shown for macOS (~/Library/Application Support/Cursor → ~/.config/Cursor on Linux, %APPDATA%\Cursor on Windows). The CLI root defaults to ~/.cursor; substitute the XDG or CURSOR_CONFIG_DIR override when configured.
| Path | What it holds |
|---|---|
…/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb |
(IDE) All conversation content + metadata — cursorDiskKV key/value table plus a composerHeaders index table. Can be ~1 GB |
…/Cursor/User/globalStorage/conversation-search.db |
(IDE) FTS5 full-text index over conversation titles + bodies, added in Cursor 3.11. Fastest search surface; best-effort, not exhaustive |
…/Cursor/User/workspaceStorage/<hash>/state.vscdb |
(IDE) Legacy per-workspace conversation metadata (stopped updating at Cursor 3.0); workspace.json sibling maps hash → folder (folder or workspace key) |
~/.cursor/projects/<path-slug>/agent-transcripts/<id>/<id>.jsonl |
Plaintext JSONL transcript of agent conversations — IDE agent threads and CLI agent sessions. Only exists for recent conversations (from ~Cursor 3.0); sub-agents live in a subagents/<subagentId>.jsonl sibling dir |
~/.cursor/chats/<md5>/<sessionId>/store.db |
CLI (agent) session store + meta.json. <md5> = md5 of the workspace absolute path |
~/.cursor/plans/*.plan.md |
Plan-mode artifacts (markdown) |
~/.cursor/prompt_history.json |
Rolling array of recent typed prompts (small; IDE only) |