Autonomous Background Workflows

Coding While You Sleep

Background Agents are Cursor's most advanced feature. They run autonomously in the cloud, handling complex tasks while you continue working — or even while you're away from the computer.

What Background Agents Can Do

• Clone repositories and create feature branches
• Write code across multiple files based on issue descriptions
• Run tests and fix failures iteratively
• Open pull requests with detailed descriptions
• Integrate with issue trackers (Jira, Linear, GitHub Issues)

Parallelization

You can run up to 8 background agents simultaneously, each working on different tasks. Use Git worktrees to give each agent its own branch and working directory, preventing conflicts.

// Typical background agent workflow:
// 1. Assign a GitHub issue to the agent
// 2. Agent clones repo, creates branch
// 3. Writes code, installs deps, runs tests
// 4. Opens PR when all tests pass
// 5. You review and merge