Cursor indexes your entire codebase into a searchable vector store — enabling AI that truly understands your project, not just the open file.

How Indexing Works

• On first open, Cursor indexes all files in the project
• Updates automatically as you change files
• Uses embeddings to enable semantic search across code
• Respects .gitignore — doesn't index ignored files

What This Enables

• @Codebase search finds relevant code semantically
• Composer understands how new code should fit the existing architecture
• Chat answers questions about code it hasn't seen in this session

Privacy

Enable Privacy Mode in settings to prevent code from being stored on Cursor's servers.

Reference:

Codebase indexing documentation

https://docs.cursor.com/context/codebase-indexing