I’ve run into an issue where Cursor’s AI chat abruptly loses all context in the middle of a chat and sometimes in the middle of a response. It has happened multiple times in the past week or so. It behaves as if it’s started a brand-new chat and is unable to recall anything from the current conversation. For example once it appears to have lost all context, I would ask it something like “What have we discussed so far in this chat?” and it would respond with something like “This is the first message in the conversation so far” even though there have been a number of messages prior to this. Sometimes the chat conversation is only 10-15 back and forth messages long working on a feature refractor or implementation before it forgets everything we have just discussed and implemented. It still has access to the codebase and files and can reread them to try guess what I am talking about but loses all knowledge of the conversation history. The conversation history is still visible in the chat UI and I can scroll to the top and load earlier messages.
My current solution is to start a new chat once this occurs and try to rebuild the context of what I am trying to do, why, and where I am up to with it, to bring the ai “up to speed”.
This is extremely annoying and frustrating when I am in the middle of implementing something.
Has anyone else experienced this or know what might be causing it?
I am using cursor v0.49.6 with the 3.7 sonnet thinking model.
I’m thinking it may be a connection related issue because it usually happens when it takes a long time for the ai to generate a response or when I have a few connection failed attempts. It is almost like there is an internal session timeout or something while waiting for the connection or response, which causes the conversation context to be dropped so it returns as if it is a new session and “forgets” about the previous messages. But I have a strong and stable internet connection so I am not sure why I am experiencing connection issues in the first place. I am also using slow requests as my fast request quota has been exhausted so I’m not sure if this also contributes to the issue.
I am just guessing here trying to workout what is causing the problem and may be completely wrong.
It doesn’t seem like a connection issue.. just after the chat context gets to a certain size it auto-summarizes, sends it as a hidden message to the llm and trims all conversation context prior to the new summary. Similar to manually hitting the new chat button.. only it will do it in the middle of complex updates or in the middle of a 10 step plan
Happened again here. Context was purged on step 3 of a 4 step form. Cursor has no idea it is already complete with step 1. I will likely need to delete the form and start over.
I agree it is quite possibly a context limit issue. However for me it doesn’t appear to be creating the summary as it has absolutely no knowledge of anything it has done or discussed. If I do try the start new chat with summary, the summary is just something like:
“the user asked what had been discussed in the chat. I explained to the user that this was the first message in the conversation and to provide specific instructions or questions”
Given that it sometimes happens after only a handful of back and forth messages made me think that it may be something other then a context limit issue.
Are you using v0.49.6? As it is only a relatively recent issue I have encountered I am thinking that it may be a v0.49.6 issue and if I reinstall an older version I may be able to avoid the issue until it gets resolved by the cursor team.
You know what, I’ve had this happen a good few times and it’s annoyed the heck out of me and had me cursing cursor…but…
Today I was just using Claude on it’s own via our Pro subscription and it did the exact same thing.
I’ve been using it quite a bit today. I started a new conversation, sent it a mid sized prompt. It got mid way through its answer then the screen wiped and it just said “What can I help you with today?”
Never seen Claude do it by itself before but it looks like this isn’t down to Cursor itself.
Same problem here. Even in a small code, it suddenly forgets all context (the chat is normally displayed with the entire history) and starts analyzing all the files again, forgetting what it was doing. It’s happened to me several times, but the last time was due to an internet disconnection, so I don’t know if that’s the culprit.
I reinstalled v0.49.5 and have been using it for couple of days now and I have not run in to the issue again yet. So I am not sure if this was a 0.49.6 issue or a Claude issue which has now been fixed or if the cursor team has resolved it, but 0.49.5 seems to be working fine so far.
