Cursor Project and pstack
Cursor Project and pstack
Section titled “Cursor Project and pstack”Summary
Section titled “Summary”Cursor Projects is a first-party Cursor product (beta, announced 2026-09-10) for long-lived bodies of work. You chat with a coordinator agent that plans and delegates to many coding agents (cloud by default, local when needed), keeps shared context across machines, and can subscribe to Slack, schedules, and PRs so it acts without a new prompt.
pstack is a separate Cursor plugin (also usable as Agent Skills elsewhere) by Lauren Tan (@poteto). It packages rigorous engineering skills and playbooks—especially /poteto-mode—so agents investigate, design, implement, verify, and ship with less slop and more evidence. It is not the classic Unix pstack debugger.
They sit in the same Cursor agent ecosystem and share a “coordinator + fleet” mental model (pstack even has an orchestrate playbook), but official docs do not claim that Projects is built on or powered by pstack. Treat them as complementary: Projects = cloud product/orchestration surface; pstack = quality/workflow plugin you install into chats/agents.
Cursor Project — what it is, how it works, why it matters
Section titled “Cursor Project — what it is, how it works, why it matters”What it is
Section titled “What it is”A Project is a durable work unit for something larger than one chat: a multi-PR feature, a migration, a full app, or ongoing “gardening.” You direct it by chatting with its coordinator. The coordinator does not write code; it plans, creates/manages agents that do the work, and brings finished work back for you to check.
Projects live in the left-hand nav of the Agents Window and run on Cloud Agents.
How it works (core capabilities)
Section titled “How it works (core capabilities)”-
Cloud by default, local when needed
Each Project runs on its own cloud computer, so closing your laptop does not stop it, and it can run more parallel agents than a laptop alone. For on-machine testing, the coordinator can spin up a local agent. -
Shared context
The Project keeps a set of files that sync across every cloud and local machine its agents use. Agents add research, artifacts, codebase learnings, and preferences (e.g. how to test a service). Context accumulates over months, so new agents do not need a full re-onboarding. -
Subscriptions (“Listening”)
On request, the coordinator watches signals and acts without waiting for you: Slack channels, schedules (e.g. daily), PR activity, CI on a branch. A Listening pill lists active subscriptions so you can inspect or remove them.
Create / constraints (from docs)
Section titled “Create / constraints (from docs)”- Agents Window → Projects → New Project → name/icon → pick workspace (GitHub-connected cloud repos) and coordinator model → Create.
- Best for work that outlives a single chat.
- Rolling out to all users in beta.
- Not available on Enterprise plans.
- Not available with Privacy Mode (Legacy) — Projects use Cloud Agents, which store code in the cloud while they run.
Why it matters / usage patterns (Cursor’s own framing)
Section titled “Why it matters / usage patterns (Cursor’s own framing)”Cursor’s blog highlights three patterns:
- Feature work — research → shared context → parallel implement/test → optional local run → post-ship monitoring.
- Migrations — establish a safe approach with the coordinator, apply incrementally across many PRs, gradually reduce review intensity.
- Gardening — standing quality/regression work via PR/Slack/schedule subscriptions (e.g. design-system lint extraction).
Internal claims from the launch post (company metrics; treat as marketing until independently verified): new users merge ~30% more PRs; users who primarily use Projects merge ~6× as many; Cursor used Projects for multi-hundred-PR migrations and for shipping Projects itself.
pstack — what it is, how it relates (or doesn’t) to Project
Section titled “pstack — what it is, how it relates (or doesn’t) to Project”What it is
Section titled “What it is”pstack is an official Cursor marketplace plugin (/add-plugin pstack), mirrored for standalone Agent Skills use (backnotprop/pstack → sync of cursor/plugins/pstack). Author: Lauren Tan (@poteto) — React core / formerly Cursor eng; described as the skills she uses daily for high-quality agent work.
Goal (author’s words): not maximize LOC; write less but higher-quality, verifiable code so you can parallelize agents with confidence (“fearless parallelism”).
Not the Unix process-stack dump utility of the same name.
How you use it
Section titled “How you use it”- Install:
/add-plugin pstack(ornpx skills add backnotprop/pstackfor non-Cursor harnesses). - Configure models:
/setup-pstack→ writes~/.cursor/rules/pstack-models.mdc(role → model overrides). - Default entry:
/poteto-mode— matches a playbook, copies steps into a todo list, routes specialist skills, demands runtime/evidence-style verification.
Notable pieces:
- Playbooks (~23): investigation, bug fix, feature, refactoring, perf, hillclimb, prototype, visual parity, autonomous run, orchestrate, autopilot-full/stack, babysit, shipping, session pickup, pause safely, etc.
- Skills:
/how,/why,/architect,/arena,/swarm,/interrogate,/tdd,/unslop,/blast-radius,/teach,/recall,/automate-me, verification skill generators, etc. - Principles: ~21–23 short principle skills (laziness protocol, prove-it-works, boundary discipline, …) indexed by poteto-mode.
- Subagents:
poteto-agent(full style; resume rather than spawn siblings), Comment Sicko (via/no-comments). - Optional Benny automation pack (Slack triage → reproduce/fix); dormant until explicitly set up.
- Some advanced flows assume cursor-team-kit (
/deslop, control-cli/ui) or Cursor built-ins (/loop,/create-skill).
Relation to Cursor Projects
Section titled “Relation to Cursor Projects”| Cursor Projects | pstack | |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | First-party product feature | Installable plugin / skills pack |
| Surface | Agents Window + cloud VMs + subscriptions | Slash skills / playbooks inside agent chats |
| Coordinator | Built-in Project coordinator (no code-writing) | Conceptual; orchestrate playbook = standing coordinator chat + fleets |
| Persistence | Months of shared Project files + cloud run | Session/playbook/state files; overnight via /loop + finish predicates |
| Official link | Docs + blog: Projects | Marketplace + cursor/plugins/pstack |
Fit: Complementary. Projects is the productized cloud coordinator. pstack is how many Cursor engineers (and outsiders) make individual or multi-agent runs rigorous. pstack’s orchestrate playbook addresses similar “multi-day, many PRs, fleets of subagents” problems as Projects, but it is a skill workflow, not the Projects product. No authoritative Cursor doc found stating that Projects is pstack or is powered by it.
How they fit together (if applicable)
Section titled “How they fit together (if applicable)”Practical mental model for later recall:
- Use Projects when you want a standing, cloud-hosted program of work—shared context, parallel cloud agents, Slack/PR/schedule reactivity—without babysitting each agent from your laptop.
- Use pstack when you want engineering discipline inside agent runs: reproduce before fix, architect before shape locks, multi-model review, real-artifact verification, playbooked overnight work.
- You could use pstack skills inside agents that a Project coordinator spawns (plugin available to those agents if installed/enabled), but that composition is an inference from how Cursor plugins work—not an officially documented Projects+pstack integration.
Do not confuse either with Unix pstack.
Key links
Section titled “Key links”Cursor Projects
Section titled “Cursor Projects”- https://cursor.com/blog/projects — Introducing Projects (2026-09-10)
- https://cursor.com/docs/agent/projects — Official docs
- https://cursor.com/changelog/projects — Changelog entry
- https://cursor.com/blog/cloud-agent-lessons — Cloud agents infrastructure context (related, not Projects-specific)
pstack
Section titled “pstack”- https://cursor.com/marketplace/cursor/pstack — Marketplace listing
- https://github.com/cursor/plugins/tree/main/pstack — Official plugin source (under cursor/plugins)
- https://github.com/backnotprop/pstack — Standalone mirror / Agent Skills install
- https://github.com/cursor/plugins/blob/main/pstack/docs/guide/README.md — Official pstack guide
- https://flaviocopes.com/pstack/ — Independent deep dive (2026-08-21; useful overview; counts may lag README)
Open questions / unknowns
Section titled “Open questions / unknowns”- Exact rollout status for a given account (docs say rolling out; Enterprise and Privacy Mode Legacy excluded).
- Whether / how officially Projects coordinators load marketplace plugins like pstack by default.
- Whether pstack’s orchestrate playbook is intended to be superseded by Projects for long programs, or remain the local/chat-native path.
- Company launch metrics (30% / 6× PR merges) — only from Cursor’s blog; no independent validation here.
- Minor source drift: secondary writeups cite ~21–22 principles/playbooks; the live README mirror lists ~23 playbooks and ~23 principles—prefer the repo README over older articles when counting.
- Author role/affiliation wording varies across mirrors (“worked at Cursor” vs current title elsewhere); treat “created pstack while shipping these skills inside Cursor” as the solid claim.