Currency dollar signs ($) in assistant responses are parsed as LaTeX inline math delimiters

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Description: When the assistant’s response contains dollar amounts (e.g., $1,500, $879K), Cursor’s markdown renderer interprets pairs of $ characters as LaTeX inline math boundaries. This causes: (1) dollar signs to disappear, (2) all text between two dollar signs to render in italic/math font, and (3) content to become unreadable when multiple dollar amounts appear in the same paragraph.

Expected behavior: Dollar signs used in natural language for currency should render literally, not trigger math mode. The renderer should either require ( and ) for inline math, or use heuristics (like spacing/context) to distinguish currency from math expressions.

Repro: Ask the assistant any question involving multiple dollar amounts in a single paragraph.

Steps to Reproduce

Open Cursor and start a new chat (Agent, Ask, or any mode).
Send a prompt that will cause the assistant to include multiple dollar amounts in a single paragraph. For example:
“Summarize this financial plan: I have
879
K
n
e
t
w
o
r
t
h
,
879Knetworth,154.5K in savings, a
13
,
232
/
m
o
n
t
h
b
u
d
g
e
t
,
a
n
d
I
′
m
p
r
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j
e
c
t
i
n
g
13,232/monthbudget,andI
′
mprojecting16,100-$16,800/month in revenue from three income streams.”

Observe the rendered response in the chat panel.
Expected Result: Dollar signs render literally as currency symbols. The text reads naturally, e.g.: "
879
K
n
e
t
w
o
r
t
h
,
879Knetworth,154.5K in savings…"

Actual Result: The renderer interprets pairs of $ characters as LaTeX inline math delimiters. All text between two $ signs is rendered in italic math font, the dollar signs themselves disappear, and the paragraph becomes garbled/unreadable.

Environment:

OS: macOS (Darwin 25.3.0)
Cursor version: [fill in from Cursor > About Cursor]
Occurs in all chat modes (Agent, Ask, etc.)
Notes:

The bug is more severe when multiple dollar amounts appear in the same paragraph, since more text gets swept between paired $ delimiters.
Single isolated dollar amounts may sometimes render correctly if there’s no second $ on the same line to close the math expression.

Expected Behavior

Look nice

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.6.18
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 68fbec5aed9da587d1c6a64172792f505bafa250
Date: 2026-03-10T02:01:17.430Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Early Access
Electron: 39.6.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.3.0

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Opus 4.6

For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled

594df1e2-d3fc-404d-8b22-d8a28d75fb2e

Additional Information

This makes cursor nearly unusable for me.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

3

Screenshot 2026-03-11 at 4.57.38 PM
Screenshot 2026-03-11 at 4.57.38 PM1290×290 40.2 KB

4

Hey, thanks for the report. Great write-up with clear steps and a screenshot. I can see the issue in the screenshot.

This is a known issue with markdown rendering in chat. The ( $\ ) sign is treated as a LaTeX inline math delimiter instead of a currency symbol. The team is aware, and your report helps raise the priority.

As a temporary workaround, you can ask the model to escape dollar signs in the prompt, for example: “use \$ for dollar signs” or “avoid using bare $ signs, write ‘USD’ instead”. Not perfect, but it should help until the renderer is fixed.

Let me know if the workaround helps.

6

Just wanted to mention that this is affecting my work as well - we deal with lots of dollar values and output is virtually unreadable when Cursor decides to render it as LaTeX. This is a recent issue, if that helps. Back a few weeks ago there was no trouble with “$” symbols being used, so it seems like maybe the team was trying to add a new LaTeX capability?

7

Hey @bsplosion, this is indeed part of a known markdown rendering regression. Your observation is spot on, it started after a recent update that changed how the chat panel renders markdown.

The team is aware and tracking this.

Same workaround as above applies, you can ask the model to use USD instead of $, or escape dollar signs. Also, the raw model output is actually correct, so if you copy the response using right-click then Copy and paste it into a text editor, it should read fine.

8

Dean,

Tons of people are being affected by this issue. It utterly interrupts anyone’s ability to continue having conversations with their agent. Can you please escalate this? It’s too easy for people to jump over to Claude code and continue conversations, so this issue is likely to cause customer churn.

Rock

12

Hey @Rocky_Medure, @bsplosion!

The markdown rendering issue where dollar signs were parsed as LaTeX has been addressed in a recent Cursor update. Updating to the latest version should resolve this.

13

Thank you!

1 Like
14

Thanks @mohitjain !

1 Like