chatback

Find unfinished and on-hold Cursor agent chats — then pick them up again.

Local-only MCP server for the Cursor community. Indexes your agent transcripts under ~/.cursor/projects, scores open loops (aborted, errored, interrupted, open todos, hold language), and exposes tools so the agent can show you a Chatback inbox.

No cloud. No upload. MIT licensed.

Why this exists

Generic chat search helps you find old threads. chatback helps you finish them — ranked by what looks unfinished or explicitly on hold.

Related MCP server: itaca

Install (30 seconds)

Cursor Marketplace / plugin

Once listed, install Chatback from Marketplace. Until then, add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chatback": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:princemuichkine/chatback"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Cursor (or Developer: Reload Window).

Local development

git clone https://github.com/princemuichkine/chatback.git
cd chatback
npm install && npm run build

Point MCP at your build:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chatback": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/chatback/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Or symlink as a Cursor plugin:

ln -s "$(pwd)" ~/.cursor/plugins/local/chatback

MCP tools

Resource: chatback://inbox — markdown summary of top open loops.

CLI (debug without MCP)

npx -y github:princemuichkine/chatback --help
npx -y github:princemuichkine/chatback --print-inbox 10

Open-loop signals

• Last agent paragraph — cleaned user-facing closing (monologue and [REDACTED] stripped); inbox shows up to ~480 chars

• Agent invitation closings on that paragraph (want me to, if you want, say the word, when you're ready, …) — not generic “follow-up migration” notes

• turn_ended with aborted or error

• Last message is from the user (interrupted mid-turn)

• Open TodoWrite items with non-empty content

• Strong hold phrases in user text (on hold, come back later, close this chat, …)

• Your local hold mark via mark_loop

Recent chats rank higher; threads older than ~30 days are gently demoted.

Marks are stored in ~/.cursor/chatback/marks.json. The search index lives at ~/.cursor/chatback/index.db (schema v3; atomic writes; per-file index errors are collected, not thrown).

Privacy

Reads only Cursor agent transcript files on your machine. Never sends data off-device.

Publish checklist

• cursor.directory — community listing

• Cursor Marketplace — submit open-source repo

License

MIT — see LICENSE.