Color the agent chat background by status (running / needs input / done)

Ideas Feature Requests
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Feature request for product/service

AI Models

Describe the request

Color the agent chat background by status (running / needs input / done)

Summary

Please add a first-party visual status signal for the Agent chat panel (and Agents Window): tint or recolor the chat background based on the conversation’s live state so users can see at a glance whether the agent is working, waiting for a human, or finished.

Proposed states & defaults

State Meaning Suggested default color
Running / processing Agent is actively working on the turn Blue
Needs human action Waiting for approval, clarification, tool permission, or other user input Yellow
Completed Current prompt/turn finished successfully Green

Colors should be configurable in settings (and respect accessibility / color-blind friendly palettes). Soft tint of the chat pane is enough; full-theme takeover is not required.

Why this matters

When multitasking (coding while an agent runs, or running several agents), it is hard to notice when the agent stops for approval or finishes. Sound notifications help, but a persistent color cue in the chat UI is faster and works when the window is visible but not focused on the composer footer.

Today there is no supported way to do this:

  • Themes / workbench.colorCustomizations only set a static chat/editor background
  • Hooks can observe lifecycle events but cannot change chat chrome
  • Extensions do not have a public API for agent turn status
  • CLI notifications / statusLine do not affect the IDE chat panel

Related requests exist for programmatic chat status labels and color-coding chats in the Agents Window; this request focuses specifically on live background tint by agent lifecycle state.

Suggested implementation options

Any of these would unblock the feature:

  1. Built-in UI behavior — Cursor sets chat pane / Agents Window chrome color from internal agent state (running | waiting_for_user | completed | optionally error).
  2. Settings — e.g. cursor.chat.statusColors.enabled and per-state color overrides.
  3. Public status surface (nice-to-have) — expose status to hooks / extensions / MCP so power users can customize indicators without reverse-engineering the DOM.

Acceptance criteria

  • Chat background (or a clear status band) turns blue while the agent is processing
  • Turns yellow when the agent is blocked on human action (approvals, questions, permissions)
  • Turns green when the turn completes successfully
  • Works in the main IDE Agent chat and ideally in the Agents Window
  • Colors are user-configurable; feature can be disabled
  • Does not require Custom CSS hacks or unofficial extensions

Product / service

Cursor IDE (Agent chat + Agents Window)

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