How do you leave Cursor without losing your setup?

Originally published at oioioi.ai You can leave Cursor and keep what matters. The durable parts of a...

Originally published at oioioi.ai

You can leave Cursor and keep what matters. The durable parts of a Cursor setup are files and settings: rules, custom commands, MCP config, and memories. Oi's cursor-to-oi-migration skill moves them into Contexts, Skills, Workflows, and Guardrails that work in any MCP-capable client, so your team keeps its setup whether it stays on Cursor or not.

Why are people reconsidering Cursor?

Because Cursor is no longer an independent, agnostic tool. Cursor has been the preeminent independent AI harness, a favourite of the tech community for anyone who saw the future as we did and wanted model agnostic tools. Cursor is an outstanding tool loved by many. But it must be acknowledged that it is no longer independent. SpaceX acquired Cursor in August of this year, in a $60 billion all-stock deal announced on 16 June and closed on 14 August (CNBC, TechCrunch), and this has triggered a number of reactions and reconsiderations of Cursor by the community.

The reasons people are leaving fall into three camps.

Practical

We wrote yesterday about how and why OpenAI will end model access inside Cursor on 12 November 2026, citing its experience of Musk companies breaking contracts.

Contractual

The first post-acquisition release shipped without settled data terms, leaving paying customers unclear on who now holds their code (TechTimes, 18 August 2026). An unanswered data-governance question is often enough on its own.

Personal

Some developers have cancelled because they do not want to fund a Musk-owned company. Tim Sylvester's essay Moving on from Cursor is the clearest written example, and the Hacker News thread on OpenAI's decision carries more accounts like it.

Not everyone is leaving. Anthropic has said it will increase compute for Claude models in Cursor and reiterated that Cursor is a trusted partner (The New Stack). But some people are leaving, and those people need to go somewhere.

What does it cost to switch off Cursor?

Re-expressing your setup is larger than most teams expect. A mature Cursor setup holds months of accumulated judgement: project rules in .cursor/rules and .cursorrules, custom commands, hooks, MCP server config, ignore files, user rules, and memories. This is the risk of going too deep on any one tool or model, the way your team works with AI gets baked into the existing pathway.

Some of that moves easily because it is just files in your repos. Some of it, like user rules and memories, lives in Cursor's app state and has to be exported by hand. And some of it can't move at all: chat history, the codebase index, and hook scripts are either worthless elsewhere or need rebuilding in the next tool's own format.

Herein lies the problem. If you migrate from Cursor straight into another tool's proprietary format, you have paid the switching cost without removing it. The next acquisition, security breach, pricing change, or shutdown presents the same bill again. This is the reason to hold these assets yourself, in a form you can take wherever you want to go.

Is a model-agnostic harness enough?

No, and this acquisition is the proof. Some are seeking out other model agnostic harnesses, and we connect with many of them, including Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and Cline. They remain good tools. But the acquisition has shown that model agnosticism at the harness level is not as durable as once thought.

The next trend is portable setups, not model agnostic harnesses alone. A portable setup lets individuals and teams use their rules, commands, and team knowledge across Claude, ChatGPT, a custom agent, an independent harness, or an open source model. The harness becomes a choice you revisit freely instead of a bet you are stuck with. Portable AI is the next move.

How do you redeploy your Cursor setup to Oi?

Oi is a portable AI setup that allows users to use their skills, contexts, workflows and connections anywhere. Cursor users can migrate with just three steps.

1. Create an Oi account (it's free!) and install the cursor-to-oi-migration skill in Oi.
2. Install the Oi plugin in Cursor, directly from Cursor Directory. If that doesn't work, use these instructions.
3. Type @oi use cursor-to-oi-migration in your next Cursor chat.

The skill inventories your Cursor setup, shows you what it found, and proposes a destination for each item: advisory rules become Contexts, hard policies become Guardrails, commands become Skills, and multi-step procedures become Workflows. It writes nothing to your Oi organisation until you approve the classification, it never copies secret values, and it ends with a report of what moved and what has to stay behind. Your last run in Cursor is the one that makes Cursor optional.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to Cursor on 12 November 2026? OpenAI models stop working inside Cursor on that date. About 5% of Cursor's user traffic runs on OpenAI models, according to CEO Michael Truell (CNBC, August 2026). Claude, Gemini, and Grok models are unaffected.

Which parts of a Cursor setup cannot be migrated? Chat history, the codebase index, and hook scripts stay behind. Hooks can have their policy content captured as Oi Guardrails, but the scripts themselves must be rebuilt in whichever tool runs them. Ignore files remain per-tool config.

Does Oi replace Cursor? No. Oi holds your setup and serves it to any MCP-capable client, including Cursor. Teams that stay on Cursor use Oi to keep their setup portable; teams that leave take the same setup with them.

Is Oi free to start? Yes. The Hobby tier is free, and Pro and Team plans are self-serve. Creating an account and running the migration skill costs nothing.