The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C11H8N2O2, contains two independent mol-ecules (A and B). Each mol-ecule is build up from fused five- and six-membered rings with the former linked to a cyano-ethyl group. The indoline ring and two carbonyl O atoms of each mol-ecule are nearly coplanar, with the largest deviations from the mean planes being 0.0198 (9) (mol-ecule A) and 0.0902 (9) Å (mol-ecule B), each by a carbonyl O atom. The fused ring system is nearly perpendicular to the mean plane passing through the cyano-ethyl chains, as indicated by the dihedral angles between them of 69.72 (9) (mol-ecule A) and 69.15 (9)° (mol-ecule B). In the crystal, mol-ecules are linked by C-H⋯O and π-π [inter-centroid distance between inversion-related indoline (A) rings = 3.6804 (7) Å] inter-actions into a double layer that stacks along the a-axis direction.