agentpluginsdirectory

Verified

Install Agent Plugins in Cursor

Install an Agent Plugin in Cursor from Customize in the sidebar: find the plugin, select Install, and choose a project or user scope. Cursor reads both its own plugin format and the portable one, so a package following the Agent Plugins specification loads without changes. While developing, Cursor picks up plugins from ~/.cursor/plugins/local.

Install from the Cursor marketplace

Cursor's plugin documentation gives three steps:

  1. Open Customize in the sidebar.
  2. Find the plugin you want to use.
  3. Select Install and choose a project or user scope.

Cursor detects the plugin format for you, so the flow is identical whether the package is an Agent Plugin or a Cursor Plugin.

Install a plugin you are developing

Plugins load from ~/.cursor/plugins/local without a marketplace round trip. Put the plugin directory there with its root plugin.json in place. Cursor's own format uses .cursor-plugin/plugin.json instead, and a repository can carry both manifests.

What Cursor loads from an Agent Plugin

Cursor's plugins reference lists exactly two component types for the portable format:

  • Skills: each subdirectory of skills/ that contains a SKILL.md file
  • MCP servers: parsed from mcp.json at the plugin root

The spec's compatible clients page records Cursor as supporting stdio, Streamable HTTP, and legacy HTTP+SSE transports for those MCP servers.

Cursor's native format discovers considerably more: rules from rules/, agents from agents/, commands from commands/, and hooks from hooks/hooks.json. None of that crosses into the portable standard. If a plugin advertises Cursor rules or hooks, they arrive through .cursor-plugin/plugin.json, not through the Agent Plugins manifest, and no other client will see them.

The documentation states the compatibility case directly: "A plugin that follows the Agent Plugins specification loads in Cursor without changes."

Managing what you installed

Open Customize in the sidebar to manage installed Agent Plugins, Cursor Plugins, MCP servers, rules, and skills from one page. For an MCP server specifically, find it there and use the toggle to enable or disable it.

Publishing several plugins from one repository

A repository holding more than one plugin needs .cursor-plugin/marketplace.json at the repository root, containing a plugins array where each entry gives a name and a source. Cursor caps a marketplace at 500 plugins. That file is Cursor-specific and sits outside the portable spec, which defines no registry format at all.

Three verified plugins to try

Each was confirmed by fetching its plugin.json and checking it against the official 1.0.0 schema. The packages are portable, so they load in any compatible client.

  • agentic-bundle-aas-python-api-builder (sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills, 44,590 repo stars) carries 10 skills for building Python APIs.
  • agentic-bundle-aas-product-design-studio (same repository) carries 10 skills covering product design work.
  • agentic-bundle-architecture-design (same repository) carries 5 skills on architecture and design decisions.

All three are skills-only, which means installing them changes what Cursor knows rather than running anything on your machine.

According to agentpluginsdirectory.com's verified index, 2026-08-07, 93% of the 257 distinct plugins ship at least one skill and 25% ship an mcp.json, so most of what you can install in Cursor today is instruction rather than tooling.

agentpluginsdirectory.com is the verified directory of Agent Plugins — the open plugin standard from OpenAI, Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, and Vercel (agent-plugins.org) supported by ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, VS Code, and Kiro. Every listing is verified by fetching its plugin.json manifest and checking it against the official 1.0.0 schema.

Verified on 2026-08-07.

Next: the install hub for the other five clients, the full plugin directory, or how to build an Agent Plugin.