Cursor Cloud Agents need a reproducible environment. If the setup depends on your laptop, the cloud agent will fail or invent a workaround.

What to Configure

Use .cursor/environment.json for cloud-specific setup. Keep these concerns explicit:

• Dependency installation.
• Build and test commands.
• Required system packages.
• Environment variables and secrets.
• Startup commands for services.
• Repository-specific notes that a cloud agent needs before work begins.

Do not put secrets in the repository. Use Cursor’s secret management for values that should be available to the cloud environment.

Make Setup Verifiable

The best environment setup ends with a command that proves the repository is ready:

bun install
bun run content:validate

Use the same command in prompts:

Before editing, verify the cloud environment by running bun run content:validate.
If setup fails, stop and report the failing command and output.

That instruction prevents the agent from spending an hour debugging code in a broken environment.

Keep Local and Cloud Close

Cloud setup should mirror the repository’s normal local setup. If local development uses Bun, configure Bun in the cloud environment. If tests require a database, use the same migration and seed path the team uses locally.

When local and cloud setup diverge, agents learn the wrong lessons. They fix the environment they can see, not the one your team actually uses.