Cursor Update CLI Config

Cursor CLI Configuration

View and modify Cursor CLI settings stored in ~/.cursor/cli-config.json.

Config File Location

The config file is ~/.cursor/cli-config.json.

Projects can layer overrides via .cursor/cli.json files. The CLI walks from the git root to the current working directory and merges each .cursor/cli.json it finds (deeper files take precedence). Project overrides only affect the current session.

How to Modify

Read ~/.cursor/cli-config.json, apply changes, and write it back. Changes take effect after restarting the CLI.

Available Settings

permissions (required)

Tool permission rules. Each entry is a string pattern.

• allow: string[] — patterns for allowed tool calls (e.g. "Shell(**)", "Mcp(server-name, tool-name)")
• deny: string[] — patterns for denied tool calls

editor

• vimMode: boolean — enable vim keybindings
• defaultBehavior: "ide" | "agent" — default behavior mode

display (optional)

• showLineNumbers: boolean (default: false) — show line numbers in code output
• showThinkingBlocks: boolean (default: false) — show model thinking/reasoning blocks
• showStatusIndicators: boolean (default: false) — show status indicators

channel (optional)

Release channel: "prod" | "lab" | "static"

maxMode (optional)

boolean (default: false) — enable max mode for higher-quality model responses

approvalMode (optional)

Controls tool approval behavior:

• "allowlist" (default) — require approval for tools not in the allow list
• Run Everything — auto-approve all tool calls (same as --force / --yolo)

sandbox (optional)

Sandbox execution environment settings:

• mode: "disabled" | "enabled" (default: "disabled")
• networkAccess: "user_config_only" | "user_config_with_defaults" | "allow_all"
• networkAllowlist: string[] — domains the sandbox is allowed to reach

network (optional)

• useHttp1ForAgent: boolean (default: false) — use HTTP/1.1 instead of HTTP/2

bedrock (optional)

AWS Bedrock integration settings:

• enabled: boolean (default: false)
• mode: "access-key" | "team-role"
• region: string — AWS region
• testModel: string — model to use for testing

attribution (optional)

Controls how agent work is attributed in git:

• attributeCommitsToAgent: boolean (default: true)
• attributePRsToAgent: boolean (default: true)

webFetchDomainAllowlist (optional)

string[] — domains the web fetch tool is allowed to access

Fields You Should NOT Modify

These are internal/cached state:

• version — config schema version
• model / selectedModel / modelParameters — managed by the model picker
• privacyCache — cached privacy mode state
• authInfo — cached authentication info