MCP Server 40-Tool Limit in Cursor – Is This Frustrating Your Workflow?

Posted this to reddit but thought I’d post it here as well!

I’ve been diving into MCP servers in Cursor and hit a wall with the 40-tool limit. As you can see in the screenshot below, I’ve got 50 tools enabled, but Cursor caps it at 40, meaning some tools just aren’t available to the agent.

Screenshot showing "You have 50 tools from enabled servers. The limit is 40 tools – some tools may not be available to the agent.

From what I’ve found, this is a hard cap to manage the context window (per Cursor’s docs). While I get the technical reasoning, I feel like this really limits creativity. It forces us to either disable tools we might need or pushes devs to design tools that use fewer “tool slots,” which could lead to clunky, less functional tools.

I’m curious – do you all find this limit frustrating too? How are you working around it? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and maybe we can tag this thread as feedback for the Cursor team to consider raising the limit or offering more flexibility.

2 Likes

Not yet here.
On the other hand, the limit of 25 tool calls is absurdly low and I still haven’t figured out how to remove it yet either

Maybe I’m crazy, but why is there a limit here? Why can we not simply add entire toolboxes of any number of mcp servers and the agent understand which tool from the tool box to use?

Hey , totally feel the pain. Cursor’s docs hard-cap the agent at 40 tools per session, so extra entries stay invisible. Until Cursor relaxes this (the team said they might and/or add per-tool toggles), my small gateway Smart MCP Proxy removes the pressure right now - GitHub - Dumbris/mcpproxy
See my post here - MCP Proxy Lets Cursor See and Use Thousands of Tools