Background Agent fails repeatedly with “We encountered an unexpected error repeatedly” (no Request ID visible)

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Hi Cursor team,
My Background Agent repeatedly fails with:
“Agent encountered an error.
We encountered an unexpected error repeatedly.
You can retry by writing a follow-up below.”
I cannot see “Copy Request ID” in the run UI.
Account email: [email protected]
Repository: bronkocrm/crm
Branch: main
Run URL: https://cursor.com/agents/bc-562898ae-f8f6-4fc6-907c-bba9027cc061
Time (UTC): 2026-05-01 14:38:13 UTC
What I already tried:

  • Retried multiple times
  • Started brand-new agents (not resume)
  • Reconnected GitHub integration
  • Reinstalled/checked GitHub app permissions
  • Tested from other network/VPN
  • Verified git/ssh access
    Please investigate backend logs for this account/repo/time and reset/reclone any stuck cloud-agent environment/cache if needed.
    This is blocking production work.
    I can provide screenshots and additional logs immediately.

Steps to Reproduce

My Background Agent repeatedly fails with:
“Agent encountered an error.
We encountered an unexpected error repeatedly.
What I already tried:

  • Retried multiple times
  • Started brand-new agents (not resume)
  • Reconnected GitHub integration
  • Reinstalled/checked GitHub app permissions
  • Tested from other network/VPN
  • Verified git/ssh access

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

2026-05-01_17-48-35.png
2026-05-01_17-48-35.png1870×930 85.7 KB

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Web version (cursor com /agents/), no Desktop IDE/CLI version

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

5

Hey, thanks for the detailed report. The bcId and repro steps really help.

This is a known bug, the same one as in this thread: Cloud agent reports error after initialization without additional information. The agent does bring up the environment and load the snapshot correctly, but the kickoff message gets lost before the conversation loop starts, so StreamConversation keeps failing with Missing request message. This is a server-side issue, not related to your repo or environment, and not related to your network or VPN.

We’ve reported the issue internally, but there’s no exact ETA yet. Once we have an update, we’ll post it in the linked thread.

As a temporary workaround, you can try running the agent from the IDE via the Agents window on the same branch and repo. That uses a different kickoff code path and often works. Some users are still seeing it fail from the IDE too, so it’s not guaranteed. If you try it, let us know if it helped.