Cursor 3 shortcuts and settings cheatsheet: the 22 that matter

Cursor 3 shipped through February-April 2026 with a redesigned Agents Window, parallel agent sessions, canvases, /multitask, and keybinding changes that cost any 2.x user 20 minutes on the first session. This page covers the full shortcut set organized by category, the settings worth changing on every machine, the @-context and slash-command reference, and the migration gotchas from 2.x.

By Ryan Calloway. Updated May 2026.

AI agent shortcuts

Code suggestion shortcuts

Context and navigation shortcuts

The 4 bindings that moved or are new

• “Jump to next diagnostic” was Cmd + Shift + M in 2.x. In Cursor 3 it is F8, matching VS Code default. Remap in the keybindings editor if you want the old binding back.
• “Open AI chat” changed meaning. Cmd + L opened a standalone chat view in 2.x. In Cursor 3, Cmd + L is Composer in a new chat. The old sidebar-only chat is now at View > Cursor Chat. Old muscle memory lands you in Composer instead.
• “New parallel agent session” (Cmd + Shift + N) did not exist in 2.x. Parallel agents are new in Cursor 3; this shortcut queues a concurrent Composer run alongside your current session.
• Inline Edit (Cmd + K) existed in 2.x but now opens a natural-language editing input after you select code. Select a function, press Cmd + K, type “add input validation”, and the diff appears inline.

@ context references

Type @ in the chat input to attach context directly to your prompt without copy-pasting:

Navigate candidates with arrow keys after typing @. Type / after a folder name to expand subfolders. Use @Code rather than @Files when you want the model to see a specific function without the surrounding file noise.

Slash commands

Custom slash commands live as Markdown files in .cursor/commands/*.md (project-level) or ~/.cursor/commands/*.md (global). Team and Enterprise plans can create shared commands via the Cursor Dashboard.

The 6 settings worth changing on every machine

// .cursor/settings.json
{
  "composer.agent.model": "auto",
  "composer.agent.parallelism": 2,
  "rag.chunker.size": 768,
  "rag.chunker.overlap": 128,
  "autocomplete.maxContextFiles": 12,
  "indexer.includeNodeModules": false
}

The indexer.includeNodeModules setting is the most impactful for anyone on Node or pnpm. Cursor 3’s indexer walks node_modules by default, which extends cold-start time substantially on monorepos. The r/cursor “Cursor 3 cold start is slow” thread converges on this fix across dozens of replies. Set it to false unless you specifically author a library you want indexed.

The RAG chunker settings: 768 tokens with 128 overlap is the sweet spot for most codebases. The default 512/64 splits functions at awkward boundaries. Larger chunks mean fewer retrieval hits but better context per hit; the 768/128 ratio keeps context coherent without blowing the retrieval budget.

Mode reference

Canvases (April 2026)

Cursor agents can now respond with interactive canvases – durable artifacts pinned in the Agents Window side panel. Canvases combine tables, diagrams, and charts into dashboards and custom UIs. Request one by asking the agent to “create a canvas” or by using a rule that triggers canvas output for data-heavy responses. Canvases persist across chat sessions and can be reopened from the Agents Window.

.cursorignore and .cursor/rules migration

Two one-time gotchas when upgrading from 2.x:

• If your 2.x .cursorignore has any line starting with /, strip the leading slash. In Cursor 3 the matcher is gitignore-compatible, and a leading slash pins the pattern to the repo root only. A top-level /src pattern now matches only the root-level src/, not nested ones.
• The legacy .cursorrules file is still read in Cursor 3 but does not inherit the precedence of the new .cursor/rules/*.mdc files. Move your rules to the new location. The official Cursor docs cover the .mdc frontmatter format.

Plan and pricing

Related

For the full review of Cursor 3 + Composer 2 with the 14-task scores, see the Cursor 3 review. For the chunker math behind the 768/128 settings above, see the RAG defaults cheatsheet.

One-line takeaway

Set the indexer to skip node_modules, bump the RAG chunker to 768/128, learn Cmd + K for inline edits and Cmd + . for mode switching, move your rules to .cursor/rules/, and Cursor 3 stops surprising you within the first hour.