Agent Run/Execute shows No output and does not return real stdout in project windows on macOS

Support Bug Reports
,
4

Hey, this is a known issue. We’ve seen several reports of this on macOS, especially with zsh.

You’ve already done a lot of troubleshooting, so let’s focus on the things you haven’t tried yet:

  1. DevTools console: This is the most important step right now. Go to Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console, then ask the agent to run echo test. Look for errors like ENOENT, createSession timeout, or anything path-related. A screenshot of the console output would help a lot.

  2. Legacy Terminal Tool: Go to Cursor Settings CMD+Shift+J > Agents > enable Legacy Terminal Tool. Then run CMD+Shift+P > Terminal: Kill All Terminals, fully restart Cursor, and try again.

  3. Disable extensions: Run cursor --disable-extensions from a normal terminal, open the project, and check if the agent can capture output. This helps rule out extension conflicts.

  4. Clean zsh profile: Temporarily rename ~/.zshrc to ~/.zshrc.bak and restart Cursor. Some zsh plugins (oh-my-zsh, powerlevel10k, etc.) can break terminal capture. In one similar report, removing ~/.zshrc fixed the issue completely.

  5. Re-open via File > Open Folder: Since the problem is project-specific (an empty window works fine), there might be a stale working directory reference. Close Cursor, reopen it, and use File > Open Folder to open the project from scratch.

The fact that it works in an empty window but not in project windows is an important clue. The DevTools output will tell us exactly what’s going wrong.

Related threads:

Let me know what DevTools shows and we’ll go from there.