Where Cursor stores your chat and agent history

Cursor is a VS Code fork, and it stores agent and chat history the way VS Code stores state: in a SQLite database, not in readable files.

#Where the database is

Next to it sit state.vscdb-wal and state.vscdb-shm, SQLite's write-ahead files. Each workspace has another state.vscdb under workspaceStorage/<hash>/.

Cursor's documentation does not cover any of this. The paths come from Cursor staff answers on its forum, and match what we see on a Mac.

#What is inside

Conversations live in the cursorDiskKV table as JSON values:

To look, copy the database while Cursor is closed and open the copy:

cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb /tmp/cursor.db
sqlite3 /tmp/cursor.db "select count(*) from cursorDiskKV where key like 'composerData:%';"

Never write to the live database.

#The Cursor CLI

The terminal agent, agent, keeps its chats separately, under ~/.cursor/chats/<workspace-hash>/<chat-id>/.

agent ls                  # list chats
agent resume              # pick one
agent --continue          # the latest
agent --resume <chatId>

#Clear history

Cursor does not prune chats on its own. To clean up, open the command palette and run:

1. Developer: Delete Old Chats…
2. Developer: GC Agent KV Blobs
3. Quit Cursor fully, so the database can shrink.

Deleting a chat is permanent.

#Privacy notes

• Chat history stays on your machine and is not part of Settings Sync.
• Transcripts you share (Teams and Enterprise) and Cloud Agent runs are stored by Cursor.
• The database holds code and output the agent saw. Redact before sharing.

The groundedby evaluator does not read Cursor's database yet.