Agent ETA + Completion Notification / Sound

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature request for product/service

Cursor IDE

Describe the request

Hi Cursor team,

I use Cursor Agents regularly for longer coding and repository tasks.

One workflow problem is that it is often impossible to know whether an Agent task will take 2 minutes or 15–20+ minutes. During longer runs, users have to keep checking Cursor instead of switching to another task.

It would be very useful to add:

  1. A rough ETA / remaining time for Agent tasks
    Examples:

    • Estimated remaining time: ~5–10 min
    • Short / Medium / Long task

  2. A completion notification

    • Desktop / Cursor notification
    • Optional sound
    • Status such as:
      “Agent completed”
      “Agent needs input”
      “Agent stopped with an error”

I noticed there is already a feature request for a sound when a response is complete. My suggestion would extend this into a broader long-running Agent workflow feature: ETA + background completion notification.

Even an approximate ETA based on model, repository size, tool usage and historical task duration would already be very helpful.

This would make longer Agent runs much easier to integrate into a professional daily workflow.

Thanks!

6

Hi @C_Ra Thanks for the post and the feature request. What you’re asking for largely already exists today. The only thing is that an ETA for time remaining is not possible, due to the nature of how long-running agents work. It’s not possible to know how long an agent will take, but as you said, observing the reasoning level is a good baseline proxy for how long it could take.

The notification half of this is already in Cursor. In Cursor Settings → General → Notifications:

  • Turn on Completion Sound to get a chime when an agent finishes or needs your attention. You can also choose a custom sound file.
  • Turn on System Notifications for a desktop banner when Cursor is in the background. You’ll get a done notification when a run finishes, and a needs-attention banner when the agent is waiting on approval or input.

You may also need to allow Cursor in your OS notification settings.

Let me know any follow-up questions!