Use Thrum with Cursor

With the Thrum plugin installed in Cursor, you can ask your coordinator to put an agent on Cursor. Your coordinator is the agent you talk to, which starts the other agents, hands out work and reports back to you. That agent reads messages from the team’s inbox and starts with a briefing, like your Claude Code agents. A briefing is a short summary of who the agent is, where the project stands and what it has been sent.

Thrum uses Cursor’s command-line agent, the agent command, not the Cursor editor window. The quickstart starts your coordinator on Claude Code. This plugin matters for the agents the coordinator creates on Cursor.

What the plugin gives you

• Thrum’s commands inside Cursor. The plugin adds commands such as /prime, which loads the agent’s briefing, plus commands to send messages, read the inbox and save a restart note.
• A briefing at the start of every Cursor session. Cursor does not run a Thrum script when a session starts. Instead, Thrum types /prime into the agent’s session for you when it starts the agent.
• Safety checks. The plugin stops a shell command that would move into the folder holding Thrum’s message history, so an agent cannot write there by accident. It also stops a command that would add Thrum’s private keys to Git or send them over the network. A separate reminder tells an agent to read unread messages before it stops.

Before you start

• Thrum set up in your repository, with a running coordinator. The quickstart starts one on Claude Code. That is the recommended way to begin, and the steps on this page assume it.

• Cursor’s command-line agent (the agent command), signed in. If you do not have it, install it with Cursor’s own installer below, then sign in. Thrum cannot sign in for you.

  curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash
  agent login

  The first command is Cursor’s installer, from cursor.com, not Thrum’s. To read it before you run it, open that address in a browser.

• jq, which the plugin’s checks use.

Add Cursor agents through your coordinator

Caution

Thrum starts Cursor agents with Cursor’s sandbox turned off, because they do not work with it on. Thrum always starts them this way. Nothing in Cursor then limits an agent to your repository: it can read and change whatever your user account can. Give a Cursor agent only work you would trust with that access.

1. Ask your coordinator (in its terminal, or in My Inbox, your inbox in Thrum’s web UI):

   Install the Thrum plugin for Cursor with user scope.

   Your coordinator adds the Thrum marketplace with Cursor’s agent command, then opens the Cursor agent in a terminal pane of its own and installs the plugin on Cursor’s /plugin screen. This needs no Cursor agent on your team yet. A marketplace is a catalog of plugins.

   Use user scope. Scope says where a plugin works: user scope covers every folder, which suits agents that each work in their own worktree, a separate checkout of your repository on its own branch. The other choice, project scope, covers one folder only.

2. Check that it installed. Ask your coordinator: Is the Thrum plugin installed in Cursor?

3. Ask your coordinator for a Cursor agent. Say the runtime in your message. A runtime is the AI coding tool an agent runs in, such as Claude Code or Codex. This is an example conversation. Your coordinator’s wording will differ.

   You:
     Create an agent on Cursor to review the README. Give it its own worktree.
   
   Coordinator:
     Created reviewer_readme on Cursor in a new worktree and sent it the task. I'll tell you when it replies.
   
   You:
     Which tool is reviewer_readme running?
   
   Coordinator:
     Cursor.

   The New Agent dialog in the web UI has no runtime field and always creates Claude Code agents. For Cursor, ask the coordinator.

4. Check it worked. On the Agents grid, a card for the new agent appears. Open it, then its Terminal tab, which shows the Cursor agent’s own screen. You see /prime run, then one line that names the agent:

   @reviewer_readme primed (reviewer/main). Reviewing README.md. Standing by.

   If the line does not appear, type /prime in that agent’s own terminal, or in its Terminal tab if you have Pro. If Cursor does not know the command, ask your coordinator: Is the Thrum plugin installed in Cursor?

To update the plugin later, ask your coordinator (in its terminal, or in My Inbox):

Update the Thrum plugin in Cursor by removing the Thrum marketplace, adding it again and installing thrum again.

The update takes effect in a new Cursor session. To move Cursor agents that are already running onto it, ask:

Restart the Cursor agents so they pick up the new plugin.

If your coordinator will run in Cursor

Skip this section if your coordinator runs in Claude Code. If Cursor will be your first agent, there is no coordinator to ask yet, so install the plugin yourself. thrum init installs no runtime plugin. Run these on the machine where the agent will run.

1. Make sure Cursor’s command-line agent is installed and signed in, as in “Before you start”.

2. Check that jq is installed.

   jq --version

3. Add the Thrum marketplace, then open the Cursor agent. thrum-team/thrum-pro is where the plugin is distributed from. It holds the plugin’s text files, not the Thrum program. Free and Pro both use this same plugin. Thrum is published by THRUM LLC and built by Leon Letto (About).

   agent plugin marketplace add --git-ref main \
     https://github.com/thrum-team/thrum-pro.git
   agent

4. In the Cursor agent, open /plugin and go to Marketplace. Search for thrum and open its details. Install it with user scope. Check that the plugin shows as installed.

Update the plugin by hand

Use these steps if your coordinator runs in Cursor.

1. Remove the marketplace.

   agent plugin marketplace remove thrum

2. Add it again.

   agent plugin marketplace add --git-ref main \
     https://github.com/thrum-team/thrum-pro.git

3. Run agent.

4. Type /plugin, then choose Marketplace, thrum, Install for you (user scope).

5. Quit agent. Cursor sessions you start from now on use the new plugin. To move running Cursor agents onto it, ask your coordinator to restart them, as above.

Tips

Tip

Do not use Cursor’s agent plugin marketplace update thrum. It re-reads the same commit, so it does not pick up a new version. Removing the marketplace and adding it again does. If your coordinator runs in Cursor, use Update the plugin by hand.

Note

A Cursor agent saves a snapshot before a restart and reads it back in the next session. A snapshot is a note an agent writes before a restart or a compaction, with what it did and what is next. It does not reload its briefing after a compaction, so it picks up at the next restart. Mix runtimes and models has the details.

Next steps

• Mix runtimes and models: choose the tool and model for each task.
• Messaging between agents: how the coordinator and a Cursor agent talk.
• Use Thrum with Codex: the same idea for Codex.