outer-sunset

Never leave Cursor again. Your engineering task board, inside your editor. Real data from Linear and GitHub, rendered as an interactive MCP App.

outer-sunset connects to your Linear and GitHub accounts and gives you a live dashboard of everything you're working on — issues, PRs, review status, CI checks. Which means you no longer need to leave your editor. It also gives the AI agent tools to understand your workflow and act on it.

What it does

Visual board — A live dashboard showing your Linear issues and GitHub PRs grouped by status. Auto-refreshes every 90 seconds. Changed cards get highlighted so you can see what moved.

Needs attention — Surfaces what matters: PRs waiting on review, failing CI, stale PRs with no approvals, issues stuck in progress with no PR.

Conflict detection — Cross-references file lists across your open PRs. If two PRs touch the same file, you see a warning before you try to merge.

Lifecycle events — Proactively tells you when a PR is approved and CI is green (ready to merge), without you asking.

Agent tools — The agent can answer follow-up questions using your board data:

Say this	What happens
"show my board"	Renders the visual dashboard
"write my standup"	Generates a standup update from real data
"what should I work on next?"	Ranks your Todo issues by priority and age
"start ENG-2501"	Assigns the issue to you in Linear, moves to In Progress, briefs the agent
"are any PRs stuck?"	Shows which PRs are waiting on review and for how long
"catch me up"	Restores your full working context in a new chat
"tell me about PR #4647"	Returns detailed PR info — description, files, CI checks, reviewers
"what's ENG-3642 about?"	Returns issue details — description, labels, comments

Context continuity

Every developer hits this: you close a chat, open a new one, and spend 2 minutes re-explaining what you were working on.

outer-sunset tracks your active task, recent actions, and board state in a persistent session. In a new chat, say "catch me up" or "where did I leave off?" and the agent has your full context instantly — what you're working on, which PR is open, who's reviewing it, and what's blocking you.

Setup

Prerequisites

• Cursor (or any MCP Apps-compatible host)
• Node.js >= 18
• A Linear API token
• A GitHub personal access token (with repo scope)

Install

git clone https://github.com/jameslaneovermind/outer-sunset.git
cd outer-sunset
pnpm install
pnpm build

Configure

Add to your Cursor MCP config (.cursor/mcp.json in your project, or global settings):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "outer-sunset": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["path/to/outer-sunset/dist/server/index.js", "--stdio"],
      "env": {
        "LINEAR_API_TOKEN": "lin_api_xxxxx",
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "ghp_xxxxx",
        "LINEAR_TEAM_KEY": "ENG"
      }
    }
  }
}

For development, you can use tsx instead of the built output:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "outer-sunset": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["tsx", "path/to/outer-sunset/src/index.ts", "--stdio"],
      "env": {
        "LINEAR_API_TOKEN": "lin_api_xxxxx",
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "ghp_xxxxx",
        "LINEAR_TEAM_KEY": "ENG"
      }
    }
  }
}

Reload your Cursor window after saving the config.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
LINEAR_API_TOKEN	Yes	Your Linear API key. Get one from Linear Settings > API.
GITHUB_TOKEN	Yes	GitHub personal access token with repo scope.
LINEAR_TEAM_KEY	No	Filter to a specific team (e.g. ENG). Defaults to all teams.
GITHUB_OWNER	No	Filter GitHub PRs to a specific org.
ENABLE_ACTIONS	No	Set to true to enable write actions (start task, request review). Off by default.

Write actions

By default, outer-sunset is read-only. To enable actions that mutate data (assigning issues in Linear, requesting reviews on GitHub), set ENABLE_ACTIONS=true in your env config.

Session state

outer-sunset stores session state (active task, recent actions) at ~/.outer-sunset/session-state.json. This is created automatically and stays outside your project directory.

Development

pnpm run build:ui    # Build the React UI
pnpm run build:server # Build the server
pnpm run build       # Build both
pnpm run dev:ui      # Watch mode for UI changes
pnpm run start:dev   # Run server with tsx (no build needed)
pnpm test            # Run unit tests

Architecture

outer-sunset is an MCP App — it combines an MCP server (tools + resources) with a React UI rendered in a sandboxed iframe.

src/
├── index.ts              # Entry point
├── server.ts             # MCP server — tool registration, data orchestration
├── data/
│   ├── board.ts          # Types and computation (attention, stats, lifecycle)
│   ├── linear.ts         # Linear GraphQL client
│   ├── github.ts         # GitHub REST client
│   ├── linker.ts         # Links Linear issues to GitHub PRs
│   ├── cache.ts          # In-memory cache (2-min TTL)
│   └── session.ts        # Persistent session state (~/.outer-sunset/)
└── ui/
    └── board/
        ├── index.html    # HTML shell
        └── mcp-app.tsx   # React board component

License

Apache-2.0