# How Cursor Indexes Codebases Fast

DevFeed: [How Cursor Indexes Codebases Fast](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-cursor-indexes-codebases-fast-39088.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://read.engineerscodex.com/p/how-cursor-indexes-codebases-fast>)

Author: Engineer's Codex

Published: 2025-05-10T16:28:09Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Engineer's Codex](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/engineer-s-codex.md>)

Topics: [cursor](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cursor.md>), [Software Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software-engineering.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [hash](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hash.md>), [Embeddings](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/embeddings.md>), [structure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/structure.md>), [file](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/file.md>), [implementation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/implementation.md>)

Tags: [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [cursor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cursor.md>), [embeddings](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/embeddings.md>), [hash](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hash.md>), [index](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/index.md>), [indexing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/indexing.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains how Cursor indexes codebases using Merkle trees. It describes local code chunking, hash-tree construction and synchronization with Cursor's server, followed by embedding generation through OpenAI's embedding API or a custom embedding model.

## Source excerpt

Merkle Trees in the real world