Agent Side bar disappearing on collapse able to retrieve by using chat toggle off and on. Also, lost 2 of my agent history lists: one was on a glitch, the second was lost after starting a workspace, for temporary use, then moving back to just the main project.
Steps to Reproduce
on Closing agent side bar the agent side bar toggle will disappear. toggling chat off and on will bring agent side bar toggle back. Creating a workspace that is not wanted as a saved workspace and returning back to the main project, will erase user agent history list.
Expected Behavior
when agent side bar toggle is clicked side bar should collapse and expand and toggle should persist. An unsaved workspace should not have an effect on a previously saved projects agent list, an unsaved workspace should be treated as a temporary code base addition to be utilized as a reference for the current project. if workspace is saved a new project is created if workspace is not saved original project remains containing all agent history that was created while workspace was active.
These look like two separate persistence bugs. As a workaround, reopen the panel from View > Appearance and copy any important chats before switching away from the main project; an unsaved workspace should not be able to delete history associated with the original project. When testing, record the exact project and temporary-workspace paths and whether a full window reload restores the toggle, which will help isolate UI state from history storage.
Yes, the agent sidebar toggle was fixed by updating my cursor. However my agent list history from before I started the workspace is still not displaying, but it is still available in my projects directory. Provided are 3 screenshots one showing my current IDE with agent list, another showing cursor/project directory and one showing that the agent-directories are still available, but not being displayed.
The process that makes the agent history disappear is:
From inside an active project with a agent history list got to file and ‘open workspace from file’
select a folder
create a new agent transcript
3 In the unsaved workspace go to file and open recent select the original active project, do not save
original project opens agent history list gone
I was using workspace to quickly clone an audio TTS system i had in another app, had no actual use case to create a save out a new workspace for this as it was a quick integration.
I tried to send screenshots but they are not going through. but bascially my project still has the agent transcripts but they are not rendering after the process i provided. i have not tested other process with workspaces, but the one time when i had a glitch and lost my agent history was when i working in a saved workspace, but that was also on the outdated cursor version.
Hey @Jesse_Marohn, thanks for the exact steps. I was able to reproduce this on my side, so it is confirmed as an issue on our end and shared with the team.
Quick summary of what happens: when you use Add Folder to Workspace, Cursor turns your folder window into a new, unsaved workspace without reloading. The next time the chat list is saved (which happens when you create a new chat), your existing chats are attached to the new workspace. Choosing Don’t Save when you go back to the folder deletes that workspace, so the folder shows an empty list even though nothing was deleted.
Your chats are all still there, however Open the Agents window and you should see them listed.
Until this is fixed, two habits avoid it: point the agent at the second folder by path instead of adding it to the workspace, or if you do add a folder, save the workspace (File > Save Workspace As) instead of choosing Don’t Save.
this was interesting enough, that i thought i should share. The cursor agent was able to re-render the missing agent transcripts. I was not able to find them in the agent window, so i was copying the message from the directory and pasting it into the agent message and was given this in the response:
"Mystery Solved: Why Your Agent Transcripts Stopped Rendering
Your agent transcripts were not deleted and no data was lost. All 19 transcripts, including their full JSONL records, are completely intact on your filesystem in:
~/.cursor/projects/home-tuf-CursorProjects-EidosBot/agent-transcripts/
Why they disappeared from the Cursor UI:
Cursor manages its sidebar history using an SQLite database at ~/.config/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb (inside the composerHeaders table). Every chat session is tagged with a workspaceId.
Earlier this week, Cursor had EidosBot open under a temporary workspace file (IDs: ff5f71f36a28b1ca74c733adee910e08 and 5c0c7e80997372a78ae6ae0c22e7f386). All your past discussions (including “Eidos memory system design”, “Desktop OS agent build”, “Voice command integration”, etc.) were saved under those IDs.
Recently, Cursor reopened EidosBot as a direct folder workspace (626d7cee1adadb81972c7da043865527).
Because Cursor filters the history list strictly by the active workspaceId, it only renders the 3–4 chats created since the switch, hiding the older ones even though their files and database entries exist.
(If you’d ever like to have them back in your Cursor sidebar, let me know — we can run a safe, quick SQLite update that re-associates those past chats with your current workspace ID so they render in the UI again immediately.)" using Gemini 3.8.
I assumed it was an hallucination, but decided to fork the chat and give it a try any ways and the agent was able to render the previously missing agent transcripts. kind of neat. attached is a screen shot with the restored agent scripts
Thanks for following up! Quick update: we’ve landed a fix for this that will ship in an upcoming version of Cursor. Going forward, adding a folder (without saving the workspace) won’t affect your existing chats.
Thanks again for taking the time to report this, it’s a big help!
