The built-in Browser cannot open a local HTML file. Any filesystem path or file:// URL is rewritten to https://…, so the page never loads.
Steps to Reproduce
Have a local HTML file, e.g. /home/<user>/report.html (a ~5MB standalone Plotly report in our case).
From Cursor Agent chat, attach / open that file in the built-in Browser tab, or paste the absolute path / file:// URL into the Browser omnibar.
Observe the address bar.
Expected Behavior
The local HTML renders in the built-in Browser (file:// preserved, or a supported local-preview scheme). Agents should be able to show generated HTML artifacts without spinning up an HTTP server.
Cursor 3.16.17
Commit: 6b2afae0257df2bb5e1835f15165dc2f0de056b0
x64
VS Code compatibility reported by CLI: 3.16.17 / 6b2afae0257df2bb5e1835f15165dc2f0de056b0
Additional Information
This came up while an agent generated a standalone HTML metrics report and tried to show it in the Browser tab attached to the chat. Please treat local paths and file:// as first-class in the omnibar, including when the Browser tab is opened by the agent rather than via “Simple Browser: Show”.
A bare filesystem path like /home/you/report.html isn’t recognized in the address bar and gets treated as a web address. Typing the full URL with the prefix, file:///home/you/report.html, should load your report directly. Right-clicking the HTML file in the file tree and choosing “Open in Browser” works too.
Separately, when the agent opens something in the Browser tab, file:// navigation is intentionally restricted for security reasons. For that flow, ask the agent to serve the report over a local HTTP server (e.g. python3 -m http.server) and open the localhost URL.*
Hey @SandeepMenonKodiak, thanks for trying that. The format you typed is correct, and the address bar accepted it fine. The page load itself is what failed.
Is this window connected to a remote machine over SSH?
The reason I ask: the built-in browser runs on your local machine and reads your local disk. If the report lives on a remote machine, a file:// URL won’t be able to reach it.
If that’s the case, the reliable fix is to serve it over HTTP on the remote. Run python3 -m http.server 8000 in the report folder. Cursor forwards the port automatically, so http://localhost:8000/vehicles_y50_iou075_vis025.html will load in the built-in browser.
You can also just ask the agent to do this whenever it wants to show you a report.
