Clock skew prevents Docker-based background agents

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)

Describe the Bug

Starting background agent via Dockerfile from .cursor/environment.json fails.

LLMs say the cloud machine launching these Docker builds needs its clock synchronized or else it fails TLS (currently two days behind).

Note new user on this forum requires I don’t post URLs, so Docker URLs are removed

Allocating resources for this agent…

building with “default” instance using docker driver
[Build] load build definition from Dockerfile
transferring dockerfile: 2.68kB done
DONE 0.0s
[Build] load metadata for [url]
ERROR: failed to do request: Head “[url]”: tls: failed to verify certificate: x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid: current time 2025-08-21T06:36:17Z is before 2025-08-23T17:41:17Z
[Build] Status: ------
[Build] Status: > [internal] load metadata for [URL]:
[Build] Status: Dockerfile:13
[Build] Status: --------------------
[Build] Status: 11 | ###############################################
[Build] Status: 12 |
[Build] Status: 13 | >>> FROM [URL]
[Build] Status: 14 |
[Build] Status: 15 | ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
[Build] Status: ERROR: failed to build: failed to solve: [URL] failed to resolve source metadata for [URL]: failed to do request: Head “[URL]”: tls: failed to verify certificate: x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid: current time 2025-08-21T06:36:17Z is before 2025-08-23T17:41:17Z
Error: Environment failed to start
Details:
Build failed with exit code: 1

Steps to Reproduce

Launch Dockerfile build with e.g. Microsoft Artifact Registry ([URL])

Expected Behavior

Docker builds

Operating System

Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.4.5
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: af58d92614edb1f72bdd756615d131bf8dfa5290
Date: 2025-08-13T02:08:56.371Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

Background agents are currently unusable on this project due to this and if I’m not mistaken the simple fix (sync the system clock) has to be done on Cursor’s cloud infrastructure, where Docker builds are invoked - I think I’m helpless until then.

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