explaingit

pwnapplehat/cursor-openai

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

2TypeScriptAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · easy

TLDR

A self-hosted gateway that lets any OpenAI-compatible client use your Cursor subscription instead of a separate API key.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((cursor-openai-gateway))
    What it does
      OpenAI compatible API
      Uses Cursor subscription
      Streaming and tools
    Tech stack
      TypeScript
      Node.js
      Cursor SDK
    Use cases
      Reuse existing tools
      Local chat testing
      Headless deployment
    Audience
      Developers
      Cursor subscribers

Code map

Detail Auto

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filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Run OpenAI-compatible tools and libraries against your Cursor subscription instead.

USE CASE 2

Chat, stream responses, and use tool calling through a local OpenAI-style API.

USE CASE 3

Manage sessions and monitor activity through the built-in web dashboard.

What is it built with?

TypeScriptNode.jsExpressCursor SDK

How does it compare?

pwnapplehat/cursor-openaiadun-denton/chinvatagbara286/saint-cms
Stars222
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultyeasymoderateeasy
Complexity3/54/52/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Requires Node.js 22.13+ and a Cursor API key.

In plain English

cursor-openai-gateway lets you use your existing Cursor editor subscription as if it were an OpenAI API endpoint. If you have a tool, library, or script that expects to talk to OpenAI's API, you can point it at this local server instead, and your requests will actually run through a real Cursor AI agent using your own Cursor account, giving you access to more than eighty models without paying for a separate API key. The project ships with a web dashboard that walks you through setup the first time you run it, then gives you a full control panel afterward: live activity monitoring, session management, a browsable list of available models, and a real chat window for testing. Everything the dashboard can do is also available from a dedicated command line tool for scripting, and every setting can be configured entirely through environment variables for running it inside Docker or on a server with no interface at all. It supports streaming responses, multi-turn conversations that remember earlier messages in a session, and OpenAI style tool calling, where the AI can request that your own code run a function and return the result. To get started you need Node.js version 22.13 or newer. On Windows you double click a provided batch file, and on Mac or Linux you run a shell script, either way, the script installs everything needed, builds the project, starts the server, and opens the setup wizard in your browser automatically, where you paste in a Cursor API key and pick a default model. The maintainer specifically tested this project on Windows throughout development and separately verified it end to end on Linux with a fresh clone, covering the full test suite, the dashboard, streaming chat, and the command line tool. macOS support is written to mirror the Linux code paths but has not been physically tested on a Mac.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me set up cursor-openai-gateway and connect an OpenAI client library to it.
Prompt 2
Explain how this gateway handles multi-turn sessions and tool calling.
Prompt 3
Show me how to run cursor-openai-gateway headlessly in Docker with environment variables.
Prompt 4
Walk me through using the CLI to check gateway status and list available models.

Frequently asked questions

What is cursor-openai?

A self-hosted gateway that lets any OpenAI-compatible client use your Cursor subscription instead of a separate API key.

What language is cursor-openai written in?

Mainly TypeScript. The stack also includes TypeScript, Node.js, Express.

How hard is cursor-openai to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is cursor-openai for?

Mainly developer.

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