Set up peek with Cursor

What you’ll end up with

A working peek MCP server registered with Cursor at ~/.cursor/mcp.json, verified by asking Cursor to call list_recent_sessions and seeing it respond.

Cursor listing peek sessions after install

Prerequisites

Cursor with MCP enabled
Node >= 22 (peek’s native better-sqlite3 dependency only ships prebuilt binaries for Node 22+; older Node falls back to compiling from source and fails on stock Windows)
Chrome with the peek extension installed — from the Chrome Web Store, or loaded unpacked from packages/peek-extension/chrome-mv3/ for local builds

Steps

0. One-click (fastest) — Add to Cursor

Click the button (or paste the link into your browser). Cursor prompts to add peek to ~/.cursor/mcp.json — no terminal, no wizard. This wires the MCP server so the agent can read your sessions. You still need the native messaging host (Step 2’s peek init, run once) and the Chrome extension (Prerequisites) before there are sessions to read — so after clicking, run peek init once and skip to Verify.

1. Install the CLI

npm i -g @peekdev/cli

2. Run `peek init` and select Cursor

peek init

The wizard detects supported clients on your machine — Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and Cline. Select Cursor. peek writes the MCP entry into ~/.cursor/mcp.json, merging with any existing servers.

3. (Manual fallback) Edit `~/.cursor/mcp.json` directly

If the wizard can’t reach your config or you’d rather hand-edit, paste this block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "peek": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@peekdev/mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

4. Verify

Restart Cursor so it reloads the MCP config. In Cursor’s chat:

Call peek’s list_recent_sessions and show me what it returns.

You should see either an empty list or your recent captures.

Why this works

Cursor reads ~/.cursor/mcp.json on startup, spawns the listed MCP servers as subprocesses, and exposes their tools to the agent. npx -y @peekdev/mcp@latest runs peek’s MCP server on demand and talks to the local SQLite store the Chrome extension writes to. (The @latest tag is required while peek is in alpha — a bare @peekdev/mcp resolves an implicit * range that doesn’t match prerelease versions and fails with ETARGET.)