Agentic surface Chat composer drifts upward while scrolling; then snaps to bottom and jumps conversation scroll

[Robert_Howard (Tugg)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Summary
In Agent/Chat, the input composer sometimes leaves its anchored home at the bottom of the panel, floats upward over the conversation, then abruptly snaps back down. When it snaps, the conversation behind it jumps to a new scroll position. During the drift, scrolling feels stuck/jittery and the underlying text is hard to read because the composer (and sometimes message action icons) overlay mid-thread content.

Steps to Reproduce

I encountered this on agentic surface, not in a repo, empty Home cha screen full width and After I had gotten it to draw a couple mermaid type flowchart diagrams, but I’ve seen this composer box float before too.

Steps to reproduce
Open a long Agent/Chat thread (enough content that the panel scrolls).
Scroll up through older messages while the composer is visible.
Continue scrolling / interacting until the composer leaves the bottom and sits mid-panel over message content.
Keep scrolling or wait until it “corrects.”
Observe the snap back to the bottom and the sudden jump of the conversation behind it.

Expected Behavior

Expected
Composer stays pinned to the bottom of the chat panel (or moves only with intentional layout changes).
Conversation scroll is independent and smooth.
Composer never covers mid-thread content.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 3.11.19 (user setup)
VS Code Extension API: 1.125.0
Commit: bf249e6efb5b097f23d7e21d7283429f0760b740
Date: 2026-07-12T21:39:24.175Z
Layout: IDE
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 40.10.3
Chromium: 144.0.7559.236
Node.js: 24.15.0
V8: 14.4.258.32-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.256
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Additional Information

Actual
Composer visually detaches and translates upward over the transcript.
Near the top of its travel (or after some scroll/update), it hard-snaps back to the bottom anchor.
That snap reflows / resyncs the conversation scroll, so the page “slams” to a new position.
While detached, scroll feels poor and reading is blocked by overlay.
Sometimes detached UI chrome (e.g. “1m ago”, thumbs, copy) also floats over content, suggesting a layout / sticky-position / scroll-container sync failure rather than just “scroll is slow.”

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

[Robert_Howard (Tugg)]

Now it’s doing it in the regular IDE as well. I had ide and agentic open, spread out my ide chat to like 2/3 of my screen and then my chat bubble started floating up over all the stuff I was trying to read. It’s like its contagious. something that not just a part of the agentic surface, Something they share between them.

[mohitjain (Mohit)]

Hey there,

You’re right that it isn’t specific to the agentic surface. The chat transcript and the regular IDE chat share the same scrolling/layout engine, so the same glitch appears in both. This is a known issue on our side, not your setup. In a long thread the composer and message actions can lose their bottom anchor, drift over the conversation, then snap back and jump the scroll. Drawing a mermaid diagram makes it more likely, since its height isn’t known until after it renders, which throws off the scroll position.

A couple of things that usually settle it:

1. Reload the window: Ctrl+Shift+P, then run “Developer: Reload Window”.
2. Starting a fresh chat once a thread gets very long helps too, since the effect grows with conversation length.

This is something we’re actively working to improve. If you can grab a short screen recording of the drift-and-snap, that would help us track your exact case.

[Robert_Howard (Tugg)]

Thanks for the reset reminder, I’d forgotten about that one, I’ve used to a refresh reload circular icon. I do start a lot of fresh threads whenever this happens instead. TBH, its a pretty jarring mental painpoint and I’ve decided its better for everybody to report them. Thanks for explanation on mermaid, that particular one IS jarring.

I’ll drop a video when it happens next. I have noticed both of these at very wide screen widths. Usually I have to implement narrow but, another hint, exploration and creations work better for me as wide as I can get. And both were just questioning sessions, Where am I, what am I doing?

[mohitjain (Mohit)]

A short video whenever it next happens would help, especially if you can catch it right after widening the panel. And reloading the window right after you resize usually clears it in the meantime.

[Robert_Howard (Tugg)]

this is not the exact same issue with the chatbox but I did some more mermaid and widened things and got this.