Block the to list mode

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

I am using Cursor and almost a third of my prompts are getting broken down to a list of dos. Its wasting tokens for simple requests and although I am telling it to not use it, it still does a third of the time.

How can I disable it?

Steps to Reproduce

Just try to ask it for a new feature

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.2.44 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 20adc1003928b0f1b99305dbaf845656ff81f5d0
Date: 2025-12-24T21:41:47.598Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Gemini 3 flash

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

3

Hey, thanks for the report.

Auto-creating to-do lists is built-in behavior in Agent mode for complex tasks. Unfortunately, there isn’t a direct way to fully disable this in settings.

A few things that may help:

  1. Try adding this instruction to .cursorrules:
Do not break down tasks into todo lists unless explicitly asked. 
Respond directly with code changes.

  1. In your prompts, explicitly say: “Answer directly without creating a plan or todo list”

  2. For simple changes, use CMD+K (inline edit) instead of Agent mode

Could you share a couple example prompts that trigger the unwanted to-do breakdown? That’ll help us see if we can adjust the wording, or if we need a feature request to add a setting for this behavior.