Cursor Cloud Agents no longer need a repository before they can start

Cursor removed a precondition from its Cloud Agents on August 27. The agent no longer needs a connected GitHub or other source control provider before it will accept a prompt. The order is reversed: describe the thing first, decide where it lives afterwards.

How it runs

In the repository picker there is now a Start from scratch option. Choosing it lets the prompt go in immediately while Cursor creates an Origin repository in the background, so the agent has somewhere to commit without anyone having connected an account first.

While the agent works, the environment is port-forwarded and a live preview appears in the browser, which matters more than it sounds: an agent building something with no repository behind it also has no pipeline, and the preview is the only place the result becomes visible. When the build stands, a Create repo button saves it under a chosen or suggested name, set private or internal. Connecting a Vercel account publishes it and returns a live URL.

What it changes

This is a small change with a specific target: the throwaway start. Trying an idea previously meant creating a repository for something that might be abandoned in ten minutes, and that friction is now gone, with the repository created only if the work survives.

It also moves Cursor a step further into hosting its own source control. The Origin repository is Cursor's, not GitHub's, and an agent that begins there begins inside Cursor rather than inside a codebase somebody already has.