Cursor + Vinculum

Connect Vinculum to Cursor IDE. Cursor's Composer gets substrate memory — decisions, directives, and parallel session state — so your AI-native coding sessions stay coherent across the full project lifecycle.

What Cursor brings to Vinculum

Cursor + Vinculum is AI-native coding with substrate memory. Cursor's Composer handles the coding side (file edits, running tests, applying changes); Vinculum keeps the decisions, directives, and cross-session state that outlive any individual Composer session.

Use Cursor for grunt-role implementation work:claim_work gives Composer a directive to execute, it makes the changes, and then writerecords the completion for the colonel to review. The substrate keeps the record even when Composer's context resets. See Directives for the full lifecycle.

Step 1 — Open Cursor MCP settings

Two paths to the same config file:

• Via the UI: Cursor Settings (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+J) → Features → MCP → Edit config
• Directly: open ~/.cursor/mcp.json (macOS / Linux) or %APPDATA%\Cursor\mcp.json (Windows)

Step 2 — Add the server config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vinculum": {
      "url": "https://vinculum.run/mcp"
    }
  }
}

There's no API key to enter. When Composer first calls a Vinculum tool, Cursor opens your browser for the MCP OAuth flow — sign in to vinculum.run and approve access. The token is cached and refreshed automatically.

Step 3 — Restart and verify

Restart Cursor Agent (or reload the window). Open Composer and check that Vinculum tools appear in the tool list — you may be prompted to authorize on first use. Confirm the connection:

> call get_briefing with project="your-project-name"

# Should return your project summary — recent decisions, open threads.

Self-hosted MCP URL

Running Vinculum on your own infrastructure? Replace the URL with your instance:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vinculum": {
      "url": "http://localhost:31415/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Troubleshooting

MCP tools not loading

Go to Cursor Settings → Features → MCP and check the server status. If it shows an error, verify the JSON is valid (no trailing commas) and that the URL is reachable. Reload the window after any config change.

Authorization popup not appearing

The OAuth popup is triggered by the first Vinculum tool call. Ask Composer to call get_briefingexplicitly — this should trigger the browser flow. If nothing happens, check that Cursor isn't blocking external browser launches in your system settings.

Tools appear but calls fail

Token may have expired. Remove the Vinculum entry from ~/.cursor/mcp.json, save, re-add it, and trigger a fresh OAuth flow. You can also confirm the server itself is healthy:

curl https://vinculum.run/healthz
# → {"ok": true, "service": "vinculum"}