Describe the request
Problem: When doing exploratory work — data analysis, research, investigations that span many folders and files over days or weeks — the sidebar becomes overwhelming. Key files get buried in the tree, and the cognitive load of re-finding them causes context-switching friction, procrastination, and lost time.
Proposed solution: Add the ability to pin / favorite files and folders in the sidebar explorer. Pinned items would appear in a dedicated “Pinned” section at the top of the file explorer, persisted per workspace.
Key behaviors:
Right-click any file or folder → “Pin to Sidebar”
Pinned items appear in a collapsible “Pinned” section at the top of the explorer
Pins persist across sessions (per workspace)
Optional: support for simple ordering / grouping of pinned items
Optional: a keyboard shortcut to pin/unpin the currently active file
Use cases:
Data analysis projects where you revisit the same notebooks, scripts, and data files across multiple sessions
Large monorepos where frequently-needed files live deep in the folder tree
Research/exploration work that spans many directories over time
Reducing information overload when working across dozens of open files
Why this matters: A native, first-class pinning feature in Cursor’s sidebar would reduce friction significantly — especially in AI-assisted workflows where conversations and explorations often touch many files across a session. No existing workaround solves the persistent, cross-session bookmarking problem cleanly.
