Cursor `state.vscdb`¶

Source Name	Harness
`cursor-vscdb`	`cursor`

Before Cursor wrote agent transcripts under ~/.cursor/projects, IDE conversations ("composers") lived only inside Cursor's own key-value store, globalStorage/state.vscdb. Ordinary ingest never reads that file. This source recovers those conversations.

Pointing At The Store¶

There is no discoverable default. Put the path in config if you expect to re-run:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/stockroom/config.toml (or ~/.config/stockroom/config.toml by default):

[cursor]
state_vscdb = "/mnt/c/Users/you/AppData/Roaming/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb"

Typical locations:

Platform	Path
Linux	`~/.config/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb`
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\Cursor\User\globalStorage/state.vscdb`
WSL → Windows	`/mnt/c/Users/<you>/AppData/Roaming/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb`

Alternatives for one-offs (same path, different injection):

Flag: stockroom backfill --state-vscdb "/path/to/state.vscdb"
Environment: STOCKROOM_CURSOR_STATE_VSCDB=/path/to/state.vscdb stockroom backfill

Priority when more than one is set: flag → environment → config.

How It Reads¶

The database is opened strictly read-only — your Cursor state is never modified.

If Cursor is open, backfill can exit 0 and silently miss conversations. An immutable open (needed on some mounts, including WSL→Windows) cannot see the write-ahead log; quitting Cursor checkpoints that log into the database. A torn read from a live writer announces itself and exits nonzero — the silent miss does not.

The database can be several gigabytes. Backfill reads one conversation at a time, so memory stays flat on a slow mount.

What Lands In The Warehouse¶

Column	Value
`harness`	`cursor`
`session_id`	The composer id
`entrypoint`	`ide` — these are genuinely IDE conversations
`source_path`	The `state.vscdb` path, which is what makes a run identifiable and reversible
`project_id`	Cursor's own workspace id
`cwd`	The workspace folder, when Cursor's workspace storage still records it
`models`	Models Cursor recorded for the conversation (may be empty)
`messages.model`	The model that produced that turn, where Cursor recorded it

Composer ids share a namespace with agent-transcript session ids; this is how backfill can skip existing sessions, and how ingest can take over any recent sessions that you accidentally backfill.

Because cwd is recovered, backfilled sessions land in the same workspace grouping as ordinary transcript sessions for the same project. They show up alongside the rest of that project's history in the dashboard and in search.

What Is Left Out¶

Empty drafts. A composer you opened and never used has nothing to reconstruct; it is counted and skipped.
Thinking and reasoning blocks, as everywhere else in stockroom — they are never stored.
Tool results. Tool inputs are kept whole; result payloads are dropped, matching ingest.
Timestamps Cursor never recorded. A composer with no recoverable times keeps NULL started_at, which means it is honestly absent from time-windowed dashboard metrics rather than being parked on today's date. Its messages are still fully searchable.

Reference¶

Models. Backfill keeps both session and per-message models — ordinary Cursor ingest only gets session models from the recent ai-code-tracking sidecar, so older history is often blank. sessions.models lists every model used, in order. messages.model is sparse: Cursor stamps it on choose/change, not every turn. Literal default is stored as written.

Tokens. Per-turn usage lands on that message; the warehouse's session_token_usage VIEW rolls it up with token_grain = 'message'. Unmetered turns stay NULL (not zero). Pre-usage conversations get token_grain = 'none', same as ordinary ingest. This is usage metadata only — contemporary Cursor API tokens (credentials) remain unavailable from state.vscdb and cannot be recovered by backfill.

Cursor state.vscdb¶