I’m having an issue with Cursor Agent where normal chat/composer replies work, but Agent tool calls frequently fail or get stuck.
Symptoms:
Read/Grep/Shell tool calls fail with “Error: Aborted”
Agent stays on “Planning next moves” / “searching files” for several minutes
Tool calls are repeatedly interrupted
Agent cannot reliably read or edit files
Tasks that previously took 1–2 minutes now take 8–10+ minutes or never complete
What I’ve tried:
Restarted Cursor
Started a new chat
Switched models
Reloaded the Cursor window
Tried different networks / VPN on and off
Updated to the latest Cursor version
Environment:
Cursor 3.20.21
macOS
Local Next.js project
“Index Repositories for Instant Grep” is enabled
Cursor Support checked one of my Request IDs and confirmed that the request reached their servers and the model provider, but the backend showed two tool-call failures before the Agent run was cancelled.
Request ID:
5498b635-51b8-4541-a825-7b8074a0f2c4
Support has escalated this to their technical team.
Has anyone experienced similar Agent tool-call failures recently? Any workaround that actually fixed it?
Steps to Reproduce
Open Cursor 3.20.21 on macOS.
Open a local Next.js project/workspace.
Start a new Agent chat.
Ask the Agent to inspect or modify a file, for example:
“Please inspect src/components/admin/admin-order-form.tsx and make the necessary changes.”
The Agent starts “Planning next moves” / “searching files”.
Read/Grep/Shell tool calls either remain stuck for several minutes or fail with “Error: Aborted”.
The Agent is unable to complete the requested file changes.
Repeating the task in a new chat produces the same behavior.
Operating System
MacOS
Version Information
Cursor 3.20.21 · macOS · Apple Silicon (M2)
For AI issues: which model did you use?
All Model
For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled
Hey @Tazminur_Rahman, thanks for the detailed report, and sorry for the disruption.
I checked your request ID: it reached us fine and the model replied within a second. The failure is local — the Grep, Read and Shell steps run inside Cursor on your Mac, and they’re never finishing, so you see “Error: Aborted” when the run gets cancelled. Since it’s happening in every project today, let’s narrow down what’s holding those steps up.
Could you try these in order?
Fully quit Cursor (Cursor > Quit Cursor) and reopen it.
Create a new empty folder outside Documents (e.g. ~/cursor-test), add one small text file, open it in Cursor and ask the Agent: “Search this folder for the word hello”. Does it finish in seconds or hang too?
In your Next.js project root, does a .git folder exist (ls -la)? If not, run git init, reopen the folder, and retry the same request. Without git, the search walks everything including node_modules and .next, which can take minutes.
If git isn’t an option there, add a .ignore file (no extension) in the project root with these lines, then retry:
node_modules/
.next/
In Cursor Settings > Indexing, turn off “Index Repositories for Instant Grep” and retry.
While a step is stuck, open Help > Open Process Explorer and tell me if any “extension host” row is pinned at 100% CPU or not responding.
Please share the result of each step, your macOS version, and whether Documents is synced with iCloud Drive. That’ll tell us if it’s the project layout or something else on the machine.
This started happening to me too - everything works except tool calls never return. So the first “grepping codebase for xyz” just stalls the entire chat. I ask “hey whats the output of `which git`” or something and yeah, i can see it tries to run it but nothing happens after.
I noticed sublime merge can’t run git commands either, anymore? Can’t stage files or such, anything that would call git under the hood (but if i run the commands myself, they work).
This all happened since i upgraded to newest mac os golden gate, so i assume it’s apple what did something.
Installed newest xcode, issue persists. Installed newest cursor, same. Gave full disk access in mac settings, no difference. Restarted software and computer and every such thing.
Something with m y installed git being an x86-64 binary instead of an arm64 one. Literally did sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/git and it started working directly after. (There’s a built in git at /usr/bin/git that’s being used instead).
IIRC rosetta took care of this before, but not with newest macos.
@Tazminur_Rahman no clue if this will help you but it’s something to try maybe.
@Colin no clue why cursor would trip on this, but your comment hints of git being called during file search. If this had been apparent somehow this would have been soooo much easier to diagnose. (Ideally i would like a switch to have cursor ignore git entirely- that’s MY tool.)
A fix for the agent’s Read/Grep/Shell steps hanging and ending in “Error: Aborted” has landed and will be included in an upcoming version of Cursor.
The cause was an older Intel-only git (usually in /usr/local/bin) that can no longer launch after upgrading to macOS 27, because Rosetta isn’t carried over by the upgrade. Until the update reaches you, either of these gets the agent working again:
Reinstall Rosetta by running softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license in Terminal, then restart Cursor.
Or, if file -L "$(which git)" reports x86_64, remove that old git so Apple’s built-in one is used (sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/git, as @bjucko-at-sw described above), then restart Cursor.
If it’s already working for you, no need to reply. Let me know if you still hit it after updating.