Does cursor copy code from my machine?

How To
1

Hi, absolute beginner user of cursor here I had basic question does cursor copy code to where models run in order to generate code? Pardon if already asked but I did not find similar question. Please guide. Thanks in advance.

2

Yes that how all AIs that run outside your machine work.

Here is the documentation in case your request is related to Privacy or Security.

3

Privacy guide says if I my privacy mode is enabled it wont store any prompts which include code in cursor servers am I wrong?

4

Yes, the prompts wont be stored permanently. In detali:

  • Cursor is using 3rd party AI providers to run AI models listed in the Models docu part. e.g. Google, Anthropic, OpenAI etc…
  • The 3rd party AI providers privacy policy also applies as they process the prompt to generate output with their AI models, there are also additional features like using private API keys (not required to use Cursor as all functionality is provided as described in Models page)
  • As far as I remember all of them offer API access without permanent data storage, but may for compliance reason store the prompt/output for 30 days. The data is not used for training AIs.

However there are additional Cursor features which need to use your code e.g. Indexing that helps the AI select the right content, this does not permanently store your code directly but converts it into so called Embeddings. Basically it helps AI to understand your code or find related parts when processing. Without it those features wont work as well, but you have control if you do not permit that.