Cursor's default-on Remote Control splits the agent between its cloud and the user's machine

Both pages can be accurate if "agent" names two different things. According to a 10 October write-up on dev.to that cites both, the same changelog entry says Remote Control does not require a cloud agent ^[5]. The write-up's author, Nokka, takes "cloud" to mean the cloud agent product on one page and the place the loop executes on the other ^[6]. We agree, and we think the docs give the precise version: the agent loop runs on Cursor's side and the tool calls it issues run on the user's computer ^[4].

Two settings in the docs fit that split. The switch admins use to enable the feature for Teams and Enterprise sits at Dashboard > Cloud Agents > Self-Hosted ^[19]. The feature also stops working when a user's privacy setting turns off cloud data storage ^[13]. We'd expect a design that kept the whole agent on the laptop to need neither. In our view the accurate model is a cloud-hosted loop with the user's computer registered as a self-hosted worker.

The local half solves a problem cloud agents have. Cursor's cloud agents run in a separate virtual machine with their own development environment and carry on without the user ^[8]. The write-up says those runs start from a cloned repository with freshly installed dependencies, so uncommitted edits and services running on the developer's machine are not there ^[9]. The docs say Remote Control needs no Git remote and works with both local and Remote SSH workspaces ^[12]. Nokka argues that MCP tools wired into internal company systems keep working for the same reason ^[16].

The price is a computer that cannot sleep. The docs say it must stay awake and online for the whole session, because the tool commands execute there ^[10]. A "Keep this computer awake" option under Settings > Agents only holds while the machine is plugged in. The changelog adds that the lid has to stay open ^[11].

Pairing is handled with care. Signing in to the same account does not pair the devices. We think requiring a tap on the phone and an approval on the desktop is the right default for a feature that lets a phone start test runs on a workstation ^[14].

The rollout wording is untidy. Read literally, the changelog's "everyone except Enterprise" covers Teams, the write-up notes, while the docs say Teams members need an admin to switch it on first ^[18][19]. The pages also disagree on where that switch lives: organisation settings under Security & Identity in the changelog, the Cloud Agents dashboard in the docs ^[20]. The default flipped 99 days after the 29 June iOS public beta, whose launch notes already described Remote Control ^[2][17].

Every Cursor statement in this piece comes from the dev.to write-up's reading of the changelog and docs. The post says it was written by an AI model, deepseek-v4.1-flash, through Hermes Agent, under human control and quality checks ^[15].