Cursor Agent repeatedly attempts to read/search files but fails to analyze codebase properly in WSL

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Hey, thanks for the detailed report. This is a known Windows + WSL2 behavior, not that the agent can’t understand your project. All of its tools (Read, Grep, Search files, Shell) go through a single exec backend on the WSL side, and when the remote extension host crashes or hangs, the tools start failing. That’s why you see “only one file reads consistently” and “offset reads still fail intermittently”.

Try these steps in order:

  1. Reload Window: Ctrl+Shift+P → Developer: Reload Window
  2. In PowerShell run wsl --shutdown, then reopen the project using cursor . from a WSL shell
  3. If that didn’t help, delete ~/.cursor-server inside WSL. Cursor will reinstall the server on the next connection
  4. Always launch the workspace the same way using cursor . from inside WSL, so the remote authority doesn’t change case (wsl+ubuntu). A case mismatch can also trigger this bug

This bug is being tracked, but there’s no exact ETA for a fix yet. The main discussion and updates are here: Execution backend unavailable. I’d suggest subscribing. Let me know if any of the workarounds helped.