Image: Cursor / cursor.com Cursor Cloud Agents No Longer Need a GitHub Repo to Get Started
As of August 27, Cursor's cloud agents let you start prompting immediately without connecting a GitHub account. Your work gets saved to a Cursor Origin repo when you're ready.
Cursor’s cloud agents had one annoying prerequisite: you needed a connected GitHub account or another third-party SCM provider before you could do anything. That requirement is gone as of August 27.
The new “Start from scratch” option in the repo picker lets you begin prompting a cloud agent immediately. Cursor creates an Origin repository in the background without asking you to set anything up first.
How it works
In the repo picker, select Start from scratch instead of connecting a repository. The agent starts working right away. Behind the scenes, Cursor provisions an Origin repo for the session automatically.
When you’re happy with the result, click Create repo to persist the project. You can give it a custom name or pick from a suggested one, and set visibility to private or internal. The repo then shows up in the Codebase tab, ready to keep building on or share.
Live preview
The update also brings live preview to cloud agent sessions. Cursor now port-forwards the cloud agent’s running environment directly to your browser, so you can see the app as the agent builds it. Design mode is accessible from this preview. For teams with a connected Vercel account, there’s a publish option that generates a live URL.
Why this matters
The original requirement to have a GitHub account connected before starting a cloud agent session added friction for anyone doing exploratory work, quick prototypes, or builds that weren’t meant to live in an existing repository. The “start from scratch” flow removes that step entirely and lets you treat the Origin repo as an output rather than a prerequisite.
Combined with the live preview port-forwarding, this makes cloud agents more viable as a self-contained build environment, not just an assistant attached to an existing codebase.
More at cursor.com/changelog.