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Canvases, Design Mode & the Cursor SDK

🌌 Cursor 3 in 2026 15 min 500 BASE XP

Beyond Text: Interactive Artifacts

Canvases are interactive artifacts the agent builds alongside your code — dashboards, reports, task boards, and small tools that live in the editor. Create one with the /canvas skill, or let the agent offer one (for example, a context-usage report rendered as a canvas).

Shared Canvases

Teams can share canvases via a link: viewers get a live, read-only snapshot in the browser — no Cursor install required. Great for architecture reviews and status dashboards.

Design Mode

Design Mode (June 2026) brings direct-manipulation UI editing to canvases and the browser: multi-select elements, tweak them visually, and narrate changes with voice input while the agent writes the corresponding code.

The Cursor SDK

The Cursor SDK (June 2026) exposes the agent runtime programmatically:

npm install @cursor/sdk    # TypeScript
pip install cursor-sdk     # Python
  • Custom tools: register your own functions the agent can call
  • Permissions: control auto-run behavior with allow/block instructions
  • Session stores: persist conversations to JSONL, SQLite, or custom backends
  • Nested subagents: compose agents that delegate to other agents
💡 Key Insight: The direction of travel is clear — Cursor is becoming a platform: skills, hooks, MCP, plugins, canvases, an SDK, and a marketplace. Learning the extension points now pays compound interest as the ecosystem grows.
SYNAPSE VERIFICATION
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What is a Canvas in Cursor?
A drawing tool
An interactive artifact — dashboards, reports, and tools the agent builds alongside your code
A video call feature
A themes gallery
Watch: 139x Rust Speedup
Canvases, Design Mode & the Cursor SDK Tutorial | Cursor 3 in 2026 — Cursor Academy