At Appliscale, we work with multiple clients simultaneously—from gaming giants to adtech platforms. With this comes a non-negotiable requirement: absolute data separation between projects.
This challenge has become even more complex with the rise of AI-powered development tools that often request broad data access. Here’s how we solved it for Cursor, one of our most-used AI coding assistants.

The Challenge 🔒

When you’re managing 44+ projects across different clients, data hygiene isn’t optional—it’s critical. We needed to:

• Ensure zero data leakage between client projects
• Maintain separate Cursor accounts per client (when they allow AI tool usage)
• Give clients full control over their privacy settings and usage data
• Make context switching seamless for our 71+ engineers

The problem? Cursor doesn’t support easy account switching. The default behavior forces you to re-login through the browser every single time, which kills productivity.

Our Solution 💡

We discovered a workaround using Cursor’s --user-data-dir parameter to run multiple isolated instances. Each instance:

• Maintains a separate login
• Can have a distinct theme (visual cue to prevent mixing workspaces)
• Keeps projects completely isolated

How to Implement It

1. Create separate Cursor profile directories:

cp -r ~/.cursor ~/.cursor-piedpiper
cp -r ~/.cursor ~/.cursor-hooli
mv ~/.cursor ~/.cursor-backup

2. Add aliases to your shell configuration:

echo "alias cursor-pp='ln -sfn ~/.cursor-piedpiper ~/.cursor; cursor --user-data-dir=~/.cursor-piedpiper'" >> ~/.zshrc
echo "alias cursor-hooli='ln -sfn ~/.cursor-hooli ~/.cursor; cursor --user-data-dir=~/.cursor-hooli'" >> ~/.zshrc

3. Restart your terminal and launch with the appropriate alias:

cursor-pp    # For Project A
cursor-hooli # For Project B

Bonus tip: You can even ask Cursor to generate macOS Dock icons for each profile, making it easier to launch the right workspace visually.

Want to learn more about how we keep data secure while enabling AI-powered development? Get in touch with us to see how we can help your teams work smarter and safer.