origin — set up and repair the origin CLI

Cursor hosts git repositories at origin.cursor.com. The origin CLI manages them. This skill covers getting the CLI working and recovering from its common failure states. It does not decide whether to use Cursor-hosted repos — workflow skills and the user do that.

Platform check first

Supported: macOS and Linux (including WSL). On native Windows (outside WSL), Origin repo operations are not supported yet — say so plainly. Do not improvise a Windows install.

1. Detect the current state

command -v origin || { test -x ~/.local/bin/origin && echo ~/.local/bin/origin; }
origin auth status

Binary missing → install (step 2), then authenticate (step 3).
Binary present but auth status shows no session → authenticate (step 3).
Both fine → nothing to set up; continue with whatever you were doing.

If origin is not on PATH but ~/.local/bin/origin exists, invoke it by that absolute path.

2. Install

curl -fsSL https://downloads.cursor.com/origin/install.sh | sh

The installer verifies the download's checksum and symlinks ~/.local/bin/origin. New shells may not have ~/.local/bin on PATH yet — use the absolute path for the rest of the session.

3. Authenticate

origin auth login

This opens the user's browser (the same Cursor login they already have — one click for most users) and configures the git credential helper for origin.cursor.com, so git push/git pull work afterwards with no extra setup. Wait for the command to complete.

Headless or SSH session: the CLI prints a login URL instead of opening a browser. Show the user that URL and wait.
Never ask the user to paste tokens into chat, and never print credentials. The CLI stores them in the OS keychain / its credentials file.

4. Recover from known failures

Failure signature	Fix
`origin: command not found`	Install (step 2).
`Authentication failed for 'https://origin.cursor.com/...'` on git push/pull	`origin auth status`, then `origin auth login`, then retry the git command.
No Origin namespace for the account (`origin repo create` / `repo list` errors mentioning a missing namespace)	Relay the error's own guidance in plain language. For a user on a team, a team admin sets the namespace up at cursor.com/codebase. Do not retry in this session.
Not authorized to access a namespace	The user's team has Origin, but this account lacks repo access there — a team admin can grant it.
`origin auth login` never completes	The user has not finished the browser step. Ask them to complete it or re-run the command; do not work around it.

A working installation is never reinstalled. Run origin update only when the CLI's own update hint suggests it; if the update fails, re-run the installer (step 2).

Useful commands once working

origin repo clone <org>/<name> — clone a Cursor-hosted repo using the saved login (later git push/pull relies on the credential helper that origin auth login configured).
origin repo list — list repos the account can access.
origin repo create <name> — create a repo; the CLI resolves the account's namespace automatically, so no org prefix is needed (namespace failures are in the recovery table above).

Hard limits

Never run origin repo delete unless the user explicitly asked to delete that repository and has confirmed the exact repo name.
Never replace or rewrite an existing remote.

origin