Blackbox AI vs Cursor (2026)

Agents work against GitHub repositories named per task and open pull requests. Audit logs stream to Splunk, Datadog, Sumo Logic and Elastic, and a remote MCP server lets the CLI coordinate cloud agents. Blackbox names no MCP client support for the agents and no catalog of third party tool integrations.

Sourceblackbox.ai/agents, blackbox.ai/enterprise and docs.blackbox.airead 2026-09-29

MCP servers connect the agent to external tools and data over stdio, SSE or Streamable HTTP with OAuth for remote servers, installed one click from the Cursor Marketplace or configured in mcp.json, and team admins can distribute servers through a team marketplace; tools, prompts, resources and elicitation are supported.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/mcpread 2026-09-29

A multi agent task runs two to five agents (Blackbox's own, Claude Code, Codex or Gemini, each with a chosen model) on the same repository task in parallel. It records each agent's status, commits and result, and Chairman LLM evaluates the implementations. The CLI orchestrates sub tasks and parallel tasks across cloud agents.

Sourcedocs.blackbox.ai/api-reference/multi-agent-task, blackbox.ai/agents and docs.blackbox.ai/features/blackbox-cloud-mcpread 2026-09-29

The agent delegates to subagents that each run in their own context window, in the foreground or in the background and in parallel, with built in Explore, Bash and Browser subagents and custom subagents defined with their own prompts, tool access and models, in the editor, the CLI and Cloud Agents.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/subagentsread 2026-09-29

Runs start when a person or the customer's own code asks, through a task described in the browser, the CLI, the VS Code extension or an Agents API call over HTTP. Blackbox names no schedule, webhook or repository event that wakes an agent on its own.

Sourceblackbox.ai/agents and docs.blackbox.airead 2026-09-29

Automations run cloud agents in the background on a schedule (preset or cron) or in response to events, a GitHub pull request opened or marked ready, Slack messages, Linear issue changes, PagerDuty incidents, Sentry errors and webhooks, with no person starting the run; Bugbot also reviews every pull request update automatically.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/cloud-agent/automations and docs/bugbotread 2026-09-29

The CLI reads the conventions of the repository, the VS Code agent analyzes the whole project context, and skills stored in the workspace add team knowledge. Blackbox describes no indexing, embedding or retrieval over the customer's code or documents.

Sourceblackbox.ai, docs.blackbox.ai CLI and VS Code pagesread 2026-09-29

The agent finds code with Instant Grep, an exact match and regex search engine that builds and queries its index on the developer's machine, and an Explore subagent that runs parallel searches per task; files, folders and past chats are attached per conversation with @ mentions. Cursor does not store embeddings of the codebase for search, so context is gathered on each run, and the local grep index exists to speed up search.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/agent/tools/search and help/customization/contextread 2026-09-29

A run can be continued as a conversation, which keeps state inside one task. Blackbox describes no agent memory that carries across tasks. Retention windows set how long data is kept, and instruction files hold instructions.

Sourceblackbox.ai/enterprise and docs.blackbox.airead 2026-09-29

Past agent transcripts can be searched from the Agents Window and attached to a new conversation with @Chats, and checkpoints snapshot modified files within a session. Cursor does not describe a memory layer of its own, project rules act as standing instructions, and subagents start without prior conversation history.

Sourcecursor.com/help/customization/context and docs/agent/overviewread 2026-09-29

Admins constrain what agents may do through fine grained RBAC over repositories, models and agent capabilities, model allow listing, and per workspace content policies with DLP rules, prompt filters and redaction. Agent work lands as pull requests. Blackbox names no step where a person approves an agent action before it commits.

Sourceblackbox.ai/enterprise and blackbox.ai/agentsread 2026-09-29

Run Modes decide when the agent stops for approval on shell, MCP and fetch calls: Allowlist runs only listed actions without asking, Auto-review sandboxes shell commands and sends other calls to a classifier that can ask the user to approve, plain English block instructions route named actions to approval, and a team configuration set in the dashboard overrides user and project settings; browser tools require approval by default.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/agent/security/run-modes and docs/agent/tools/browserread 2026-09-29

SAML 2.0 SSO works through Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace and OneLogin, alongside SCIM 2.0 and fine grained RBAC. Zero data retention applies, prompts are encrypted before they leave the machine, and PII is stripped before prompts reach closed models. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 audits are in progress, with interim letters under NDA, and neither is complete yet.

Sourceblackbox.ai/enterprise and blackbox.airead 2026-09-29

Cursor holds a SOC 2 Type II attestation and AIUC-1, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certifications, with certificates and reports available on request at trust.cursor.com, and offers SSO, SCIM and enforced multi factor authentication. SAML and OIDC SSO come on Teams, and SCIM, repository and model access controls and audit logs on Enterprise.

Sourcecursor.com/security and cursor.com/pricingread 2026-09-29

The Agents API streams live run logs, and a multi agent task records each agent's status, commits, result and errors. Audit logs stream to a customer SIEM. Blackbox does not say what the logs and audit events contain or whether they record the agent's tool calls and reasoning step by step.

Sourceblackbox.ai/agents, blackbox.ai/enterprise and docs.blackbox.ai/api-reference/multi-agent-taskread 2026-09-29

Hooks fire on every step of the agent loop (preToolUse and postToolUse, shell and MCP execution before and after, file reads and edits, subagent start and stop, agent responses and thoughts), auditing is one of their named uses, and Enterprise admins distribute team hooks from the dashboard.

The Admin API returns per request usage events with model, tokens and conversation ID, and its audit log covers logins and user and settings changes, with no agent actions among them. Cursor does not ship a log sink for the per step hook record, so the customer builds one to keep that record as an audit trail.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/hooks and docs/account/teams/admin-apiread 2026-09-29

Deployment comes in four modes, from multi tenant SaaS and a dedicated VPC in AWS, Azure or GCP to on premises in the customer's datacenter and air gapped with no outbound internet. Data can be pinned to US or EU regions in every mode.

Sourceblackbox.ai/enterpriseread 2026-09-29

Self-Hosted Machines move Cloud Agent tool execution to machines the customer manages, such as a Linux VM in the customer's AWS account, a Kubernetes cluster or its own devices, with the checkout, build cache and machine local credentials staying there (Team Pools on Enterprise). Cursor still runs the agent loop, inference and planning, and Enterprise customers can enroll in US only data residency.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/cloud-agent/self-hosted and help/security-and-privacy/regionsread 2026-09-29

CLI skills are written by the customer, and Blackbox publishes no prebuilt agent library, template set or bundled skills. The agents a task can run (Blackbox's own, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) are interchangeable coding agents doing the same job.

Sourceblackbox.ai/agents and docs.blackbox.ai/features/blackbox-cli/skillsread 2026-09-29

Plugins bundle rules, skills, agents, commands, MCP servers and hooks, and the Cursor Marketplace lists manually reviewed official plugins installed per project or user from Customize, including Amplitude, Datadog, Figma, Linear, Sentry, Stripe, Supabase and Vercel plugins. Teams and Enterprise can run private team marketplaces, and three subagents ship built in.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/plugins and cursor.com/marketplaceread 2026-09-29

The Blackbox Router exposes more than 300 open and closed models through one OpenAI compatible endpoint, with the model named per request and provider routing. A multi agent task sets the model per agent, and Enterprise Inference runs the open weight model the customer chooses on reserved capacity.

Sourceblackbox.ai and docs.blackbox.ai/api-reference/multi-agent-taskread 2026-09-29

Users pick the model per chat or agent from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI models alongside Cursor's own Composer models, or let Auto choose; team admins allow or block models in Team Settings, with the router falling back to an allowed model, and users can add their own provider API key.

Sourcecursor.com/help/models-and-usage/available-modelsread 2026-09-29

The Agents API has endpoints to create, get, check the status of, list, cancel and continue a task, and to create a multi agent task. It creates runs, streams logs and manages sandbox files over HTTP. An OpenAI compatible inference endpoint and a remote MCP server at agent.blackbox.ai with bearer token auth sit alongside it.

Sourcedocs.blackbox.ai api-reference and features/blackbox-cloud-mcpread 2026-09-29

The Cloud Agents API at api.cursor.com, with Basic or Bearer authentication on user or service account keys, creates, lists, follows up, streams, cancels, archives and deletes agents and their runs and returns artifacts, and TypeScript and Python SDKs are published beside it.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/cloud-agent/api/endpointsread 2026-09-29

A multi agent task lets a team compare approaches, code quality and results across two to five agents on the same task, and Chairman LLM evaluates the implementations. That comparison covers one task at a time, and Blackbox names no harness to test, evaluate or regression check agent behavior over time.

Sourcedocs.blackbox.ai/api-reference/multi-agent-task and blackbox.ai/agentsread 2026-09-29

Bugbot reviews each pull request for bugs, security issues and quality problems and publishes a CI check status, and a custom verifier subagent can run the tests and report what passed. Both test the customer's code, and Cursor does not describe a harness, scored test set or optimization loop for evaluating the agent's own behavior.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/bugbot and docs/subagentsread 2026-09-29

Agents work through repositories, sandboxes and APIs. Blackbox names no way for an agent to drive a browser or operate software through a graphical interface.

Sourceblackbox.ai/agents and docs.blackbox.airead 2026-09-29

The browser tool lets the agent control a browser pane inside Cursor, navigating, clicking, typing, scrolling and taking screenshots to test applications, audit accessibility and check visual changes, through Cursor's own MCP server, with approval required by default and an admin origin allowlist; a built in Browser subagent runs these steps, and self hosted workers run computer use tools.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/agent/tools/browser and docs/subagentsread 2026-09-29