`cursor-agent` exits with nonzero status on success

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor CLI

Describe the Bug

See the trivial reproducer below.

This affects topgrade, which runs essentially that command when it is available locally, then stops for user remediation because the command “failed”.

Steps to Reproduce

cursor-agent update || echo 'Update failed'

Expected Behavior

The common condition where there are no updates available should return 0, per POSIX norms.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

CLI Version         2026.01.28-fd13201
Model               OpenAI GPT-5
OS                  darwin (x64)
Terminal            ghostty
Shell               zsh
User Email          Not logged in

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey, thanks for the detailed report. This is already fixed in the latest CLI builds. On the newest version, cursor-agent update prints Already up to date when there are no updates and exits with code 0, as POSIX expects.

The issue is that your build 2026.01.28-fd13201 got stuck because of this. On that build, the update check while not logged in User Email: Not logged in fails silently with exit 1, so it can’t update itself. That’s why you’re stuck on the January version.

Two ways to get unstuck:

  1. Reinstall via the installer:
curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash
  1. Or log in first, then update:
cursor-agent login
cursor-agent update

After that, topgrade should work fine too. Runs with no updates will return 0. Let me know if anything else is still getting stuck after updating.