AI Shell Integration ignores default Git Bash profile on Windows and falls back to PowerShell

Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

On Windows, Cursor’s AI Shell Integration (Shell Integration: Rich) always executes commands inside PowerShell, even when Git Bash is explicitly set as the default terminal profile. This causes Linux-style commands (ls, grep, touch, etc.) to fail.

Steps to Reproduce

Install Git for Windows (with Git Bash).

In Cursor settings.json, configure Git Bash as default:

“terminal.integrated.profiles”: {
“Git Bash”: {
“path”: “C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\bash.exe”
}
},
“terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows”: “Git Bash”,
“terminal.integrated.shell.windows”: “C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\bash.exe”

Restart Cursor.

Open an integrated terminal with Ctrl+` → Git Bash opens correctly. :white_check_mark:

Ask the AI chat to run ls or grep. :cross_mark:

Expected Behavior

AI shell integration should respect the configured default terminal profile and execute commands inside Git Bash.

Linux commands should succeed as they do in the normal integrated terminal.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.7.17 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 34881053400013f38e2354f1479c88c9067039a0
Date: 2025-09-29T03:10:26.099Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100

For AI issues: which model did you use?

auto

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

2

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue where the AI shell integration doesn’t respect the terminal profile settings and defaults to PowerShell on Windows. The shell integration feature currently has some limitations around terminal selection.

A few workarounds you can try:

  1. Use the regular terminal (Ctrl+`) with Git Bash and copy/paste commands from the AI chat instead of using the shell integration
  2. Try setting your system’s default shell to Git Bash through Windows Terminal settings if you have it installed
  3. You could also install WSL which tends to work better with the shell integration

The team is aware of this limitation and it should hopefully get improved in future updates. For now the shell integration works most reliably with the default PowerShell on Windows.