Cursor
Use Phase from Cursor in two ways.
- Connections: Cursor uses services such as AWS and PostgreSQL through your Agent Workflow's Connections, approved in the Phase Console. It only ever sees decoy credentials; the Phase AI proxy swaps in the live ones. See Phase AI.
- Application secrets: Cursor can list, create, rotate and delete secrets in your Phase apps without reading their values.
Prerequisites
- The Phase CLI, installed and up to date.
- Cursor installed.
- For Connections: an Agent and a Workflow in the Phase Console.
Setup
1. Log in
For Connections, log in with an Agent token for the Agent's Workflow, created in the Phase Console:
phase auth --mode token
For application secrets, log in as yourself with phase auth: Agent tokens can't access application secrets. To use Connections with your own login, set the Workflow in the next step with --workflow <workflowId>.
2. Enable Phase for Cursor
Run this yourself, in your own terminal. Cursor isn't allowed to run it.
phase ai enable --harness cursor
It installs:
- The
phase-cli-ai-relayandphase-cli-app-secretsskills in~/.cursor/skills/. - The
phase-ai-bootstrapplugin in~/.cursor/plugins/local/phase-ai-bootstrap/, which starts the proxy when Cursor first calls Phase.
It also creates the Phase AI CA and offers to trust it for your user (see The proxy CA), and asks whether Cursor may read secret values.
3. Restart Cursor
Reload or fully restart Cursor, start a new Agent chat, then repeat your original prompt.
Using Connections
Ordinary commands keep your usual credentials. When you ask Cursor to use Phase, it runs the command with phase ai exec, adding --connection <connectionId> when a service has several Connections:
phase ai exec -- aws s3 ls
The plugin starts the Phase AI proxy the first time Cursor calls Phase, and phase ai exec reuses it.
You: what can Phase manage here?
You: use Phase to list the S3 buckets in our dev AWS account
You: use Phase to count yesterday's orders in the analytics database
When the Workflow has no Connection for what you asked, Cursor creates a request and shows you a link to it in the Phase Console. Create or choose the credential there and approve the request; Cursor waits and then carries on. See Requests and approvals.
Managing application secrets
The phase-cli-app-secrets skill lets Cursor work with your Phase apps and environments without seeing sensitive values:
- List apps, environments and secret keys.
- Create or rotate secrets with random values (
--random), so the value never appears in the conversation. - Create and update non-sensitive
configvalues. - Delete secrets, after confirming the app, environment and path.
You: list the secret keys in staging for the backend app
You: create STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET as a sealed secret with a random value
You: rotate API_TOKEN in development
You: set LOG_LEVEL to debug in development
Cursor doesn't read secret values (phase secrets get, phase secrets list --show, phase secrets export), import .env files, or run phase run or phase shell. Run those yourself in a terminal. When a sensitive value has to be entered by hand, Cursor asks you to enter it in the Phase Console or your terminal rather than in the chat.
Secret visibility
| Type | Visible to Cursor | Description |
|---|---|---|
config | Always | Non-sensitive configuration, such as ports, hosts and flags |
secret | Your choice in phase ai enable (--mask or --no-mask) | Standard encrypted secrets |
sealed | Never | Write-only secrets, such as API keys, tokens and passwords |
Sealed secret values are never shown to AI agents, whatever you choose. Cursor creates and rotates them with --random, so the value never appears in the conversation.
Security guardrails
| Guardrail | Enforcement |
|---|---|
| Live provider credentials | Stay in the Phase AI proxy; Cursor only sees decoys |
Calls that mint new credentials (for example sts:GetSessionToken) | Blocked by the proxy |
phase ai enable / phase ai disable | Blocked; run them yourself |
printenv, env, export, set, declare, compgen inside phase run | Blocked by the CLI |
phase shell | Blocked for AI agents |
| Sealed secret values in output | Always redacted |
Secret values in phase secrets output | Redacted according to your visibility choice |
Managing the integration
# Check setup, the proxy and the Workflow's Connections
phase ai status
# Refresh the skills and plugin after a CLI upgrade
phase ai enable --harness cursor
# Remove the integration
phase ai disable
# Print the Phase AI skill
phase ai skill
Troubleshooting
Cursor doesn't know about Phase
Check that the skills are installed:
ls ~/.cursor/skills/phase-cli-ai-relay/SKILL.md ~/.cursor/skills/phase-cli-app-secrets/SKILL.md
If they're missing, run phase ai enable --harness cursor and restart Cursor.
Phase-managed commands fail
Run phase ai status and check the Proxy and Connections lines. A Connection must be ready. When Cursor reports a Phase error, it quotes the X-Phase-Event-Id from the response, which you can look up in the Phase Console.
Authentication errors
Check who you're logged in as:
phase users whoami
Log in again with phase auth --mode token for an Agent token, or phase auth for your own account.