Cursor Usage Monitor

A lightweight Cursor IDE extension that shows your remaining AI requests directly in the status bar — without ever leaving the editor.

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What it does

Every time you use Cursor AI (chat, autocomplete, inline edits), it consumes a "fast request" from your monthly quota. Previously, the only way to check how many you had left was to open a browser, navigate to the Cursor dashboard, and log in.

This extension puts that number right in your status bar:

⚡ 350 left

Hover over it for a full breakdown:

Cursor AI Usage

⚡ Fast requests used: 150 / 500
✅ Remaining: 350

Since 3/1/2026
Last updated: 2:45:00 PM

Click to refresh

• Turns red when fewer than 50 requests remain
• Auto-refreshes every 5 minutes in the background
• Click the status bar item at any time to manually refresh

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Installation

From VSIX (recommended for now)

1. Download cursor-usage-1.0.0.vsix from the releases
2. Open Cursor
3. Go to the Extensions panel (Cmd+Shift+X)
4. Click the ... menu → Install from VSIX...
5. Select the downloaded file

The extension activates automatically on startup — no configuration needed.

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How it was built

The problem with the obvious approach

The Cursor website exposes a usage API at cursor.com/api/usage. However, that endpoint requires the browser session cookie (WorkosCursorSessionToken) that is set when you log into cursor.com in a browser. A VS Code extension runs in Node.js, not a browser context, so it has no access to browser cookies.

Finding the right API

Cursor (like VS Code) is built on Electron and stores its authentication state in a local SQLite database:

~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb  (macOS)
%APPDATA%\Cursor\User\globalStorage\state.vscdb                       (Windows)
~/.config/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb                       (Linux)

The database contains an ItemTable with a key cursorAuth/accessToken — a JWT that the Cursor app uses to authenticate with its own backend.

By probing Cursor's internal API (api2.cursor.sh) with this token, the correct endpoint was found:

GET https://api2.cursor.sh/auth/usage
Authorization: Bearer <accessToken>

This returns:

{
  "gpt-4": {
    "numRequests": 150,
    "maxRequestUsage": 500
  },
  "startOfMonth": "2026-03-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Architecture

state.vscdb (SQLite)
    └── cursorAuth/accessToken
            │
            ▼
    auth.ts reads token
            │
            ▼
    api.ts calls api2.cursor.sh/auth/usage
            │
            ▼
    statusBar.ts renders "⚡ 350 left"

The extension is built with:

• TypeScript — for type safety across the entire codebase
• sql.js — a pure WebAssembly SQLite reader (no native compilation required, works cross-platform out of the box)
• Node.js https module — for the API call (no third-party HTTP libraries)
• VS Code Extension API — for the status bar item, commands, and lifecycle management

Security design

• The access token is read from disk on each refresh and never stored by the extension
• The token is sent only to api2.cursor.sh over HTTPS — no third-party servers, no telemetry
• Error messages are sanitised to never expose the token or local filesystem paths
• The database is opened read-only and closed immediately after extracting the token

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Project structure

cursor-usage-extension/
├── src/
│   ├── extension.ts   — activation, refresh command, 5-min auto-refresh timer
│   ├── auth.ts        — reads accessToken from Cursor's local SQLite database
│   ├── api.ts         — calls api2.cursor.sh/auth/usage, parses response
│   └── statusBar.ts   — status bar item, tooltip, warning colour
├── icon.png
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

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Building from source

git clone https://github.com/samyakjain/cursor-usage-extension
cd cursor-usage-extension
npm install
npm run compile

To package into a .vsix:

npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package

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License

MIT — see the LICENSE file included in this repository.