Chat Execution Issues with Long-Running Terminal Commands

[Tobias_H (Tobias Heckmann)]

Describe the Bug

Chat execution has three related issues when handling server startup commands:

1. Execution Hangs: Commands like npm run dev, python manage.py runserver cause chat to wait indefinitely since they don’t terminate
2. False Success Detection: When server startup fails but command returns to prompt, chat assumes success and proceeds with subsequent steps that fail
3. Inefficient Recovery: After realizing server isn’t running, chat retries with background execution - which should be the default approach

This leads to frequent workflow interruptions, wasted tokens, and multiple unnecessary retry attempts.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Ask chat to start a development server
2. Observe execution either hangs waiting for command completion OR completes quickly but server didn’t actually start
3. Watch subsequent steps fail due to server not being available
4. See chat eventually recognize the problem and restart server using background execution

Expected Behavior

• Server commands should run in background by default
• Health checks should verify server availability post-startup
• No hanging on long-running commands
• Failed server startups detected immediately, not after subsequent steps fail

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.2.4
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: a8e95743c5268be73767c46944a71f4465d05c90
Date: 2025-07-10T16:53:59.659Z
Electron: 34.5.1
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.0
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.0.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

[DemonVN]

Same here, but i know how to fix.

You can press enter multiple times in the terminal where the Agent is running, until the “skip & continue” button disappears. If it still doesn’t work, click the “run background” button, then the Agent will no longer be stuck and will continue the feedback stream.

[Tobias_H (Tobias Heckmann)]

Yes, I usually click the “move to background” option when I see it happening, but it’s annoying, because I don’t always watch the chats continuously since sometimes they run for 10-15 minutes. It’s frustrating to come back and find that it got stock mid-way on such a basic step.