Keep a Cursor agent running when you close your MacBook lid.

It depends on where the agent is running. Agents in the Cursor editor and in the Cursor CLI work on your Mac, so they stop making progress when a closed lid puts the Mac to sleep. Cursor does hold a wake lock while an agent is actively running, but a Cursor team member confirmed on the Cursor forum that it cannot override the sleep macOS enforces when you close the lid. Cloud Agents run remotely and keep working while your Mac sleeps. To keep a local Cursor agent going with the lid closed and no external monitor, use Clamshell for Mac, a menu bar app that keeps an Apple Silicon MacBook awake with the lid shut and restores normal lid sleep when you disarm it.

Quick answer

Which Cursor agent are you running?

Cursor agents run in different places. Only the ones that run on your Mac care about the lid.

If the task can run in the cloud, a Cloud Agent is the simplest fix: nothing on your laptop has to stay awake. Keep reading if the job needs your local files, tools, credentials, simulators or hardware.

Why a local Cursor agent stops at lid close

1. You close the lidmacOS starts lid sleep, separate from idle sleep.
2. The wake lock does not block itCursor's wake lock and caffeinate only hold off idle sleep.
3. The agent stops making progressTerminals, test runners and connections stop too.

A Cursor agent that is busy editing code or running tests keeps an idle Mac awake, because Cursor holds an Electron wake lock while the agent works. Closing the lid is different: it triggers lid sleep, which macOS enforces regardless of that wake lock or of apps like Caffeine. Once the Mac is asleep, the agent, its terminals, test runners and network connections all stop making progress. A Cursor team member described exactly this on the Cursor forum in May 2026, and recommended Cloud Agents for work that must continue with the lid closed.

Ways to run a Cursor agent locally with the lid closed

• Apple's closed-display mode. Connect an external display, keyboard and mouse, and power. Reliable if you own the hardware and stay at your desk.
• sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1. Keeps the Mac awake with the lid closed, but it is a global, admin-level switch with no timer that also applies on battery. See what pmset disablesleep does and how to undo it.
• Clamshell. A menu bar app that overrides lid sleep only while armed. No sudo, no admin rights, no kernel extension, no privileged helper. It uses the unprivileged IOKit clamshell sleep control rather than pmset, and the setting never survives a restart.

Clamshell for Mac keeps an Apple Silicon MacBook awake with the lid closed, no monitor needed. Free for 7 days, then $9.99 once for one Mac.

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Wrap a Cursor CLI run so it arms and disarms Clamshell

Clamshell accepts clamshell://arm, clamshell://disarm and clamshell://toggle URLs. This wrapper requests arming before a non-interactive Cursor CLI run and requests disarming when the shell exits, so normal lid sleep comes back when the job ends.

set -e
open "clamshell://arm"
trap 'open "clamshell://disarm" || true' EXIT

agent -p "run the test suite and fix the failures" --output-format text \
  | tee cursor-result.md

Read the caveats before you rely on it:

• open only delivers a request. A successful exit does not prove Clamshell armed. It can refuse, for example under serious thermal pressure, or pause while an external display is connected. Check the menu bar state before closing the lid.
• The EXIT trap is best effort. It does not run if the shell is killed or crashes. Disarm from the menu if in doubt.
• Clamshell does not know about Cursor. It has no Cursor integration and does not detect when an agent finishes. The script is what ends the session.
• Permissions still apply. Check which commands and file changes print mode may run without asking, in Cursor's CLI docs, before you leave it alone. Keeping the Mac awake does not approve anything.
• Setapp edition. The Setapp build uses the clamshell-setapp:// scheme instead.

Clamshell also adds Arm, Disarm, Toggle and Status actions to Shortcuts, which you can combine in a shortcut of your own.

Prove that the agent keeps working with the lid closed

Before trusting a long run, spend two minutes on a harmless check.

1. In a Cursor agent chat, with the lid open, ask the agent to run this command in its terminal and approve it:

   for i in {1..12}; do
     date -u '+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ' >> lid-check.txt
     sleep 10
   done

2. Confirm Clamshell is armed and close the lid for the two minutes.
3. Open it and run cat lid-check.txt. Pass: twelve timestamps about ten seconds apart with no gap while the lid was shut.

Fail: a long gap means the run was interrupted; it does not tell you why. Check Clamshell's state, the terminal, and whether the agent was waiting for an approval, fix it with the lid open, and repeat.

What Clamshell does and does not do

Arming with Option held while you close the lid needs the lid angle sensor in a MacBook Air M2 (2022) or later or a 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro (2021) or later; other Apple Silicon laptops arm from the menu bar. Option-close sessions end when you open the lid; menu and URL arming stays on until you disarm.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

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• Compare Clamshell, Amphetamine, pmset and Apple's setup

Sources checked October 2, 2026: Cursor's CLI documentation and a Cursor team reply on the Cursor forum (May 6, 2026). Clamshell behavior is described from its app source and FAQ. No new hardware testing was done for this page. Clamshell is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by Anysphere. Cursor is a trademark of its owner.