All file listing and reading operations by Agent fail in WSL

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

In a Windows + WSL environment, all file read operations by the Agent, such as Grep, Search, and Search files, completely fail. Furthermore, even when the Agent attempts to use terminal commands as a workaround to search for files, those commands also fail.

This issue does not occur in a native Windows environment.
It did not happen before updating to version 3.7.27.

Steps to Reproduce

  • Open a folder from the WSL shell using the cursor . command.
  • Connect to WSL using the WSL extension.
  • Give an instruction to the Agent from the Agent Window or Agent Tab.
  • Observe that the Agent fails to read the files.

Expected Behavior

File searching, listing, and Grep operations should work normally.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

スクリーンショット 2026-06-11 163106.png
スクリーンショット 2026-06-11 163106.png1062×945 47.1 KB

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 3.7.27 (user setup)
VS Code Extension API: 1.105.1
Commit: e48ee6102a199492b0c9964699bf011886708ba0
Date: 2026-06-10T01:46:16.942Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.256
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Composer 2.5 (Fast / MaxMode)

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

5

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known bug on Windows + WSL2. The agent tools like Glob, Grep, Semantic search, and shell all go through a single exec backend on the WSL side, and when the remote extension host crashes, they all fail at once with Execution backend unavailable. That’s why native Windows works but WSL doesn’t.

Try these in order:

  • Reload Window Cmd+Shift+P then Developer: Reload Window
  • Run wsl --shutdown in PowerShell, then run cursor . again
  • If that doesn’t help, delete ~/.cursor-server inside WSL. Cursor will reinstall the server

Since it broke after 3.7.27, if you roll back to the previous version and test, let me know what you find.

We’re tracking the issue, but there’s no exact ETA for a fix yet. The main discussion and updates are here: Execution backend unavailable. I’d suggest subscribing. Let me know if any of the workarounds helped.