Cursor Background Agents build fails

Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear), e.g. RequestId bc-212f361d-8174-4dcc-8f5a-2b41ba039775

Describe the Bug

I have a build with a custom image, but as of today builds have been failing (seemingly out of the blue):

Error: Environment failed to start
Details:
Failed to execute install command install-system-dependencies (system: true, user: Some("root")): Command failed with exit code 1: stdout: All required packages are already installed. Skipping installation.
e[3J, stderr: 
Allocating resources for this agent...
Checking out repository…
Repository checked out
⣽
All required packages are already installed. Skipping installation.
e[3J
[Exit] Failed (code: 1)

That’s the entire build log, and the error seems to occur before it even runs my custom Dockerfile. Looking for that exact string (“All required packages are already installed. Skipping installation.”) yielded very few results online and on github, so I have no idea where it could even come from (maybe cursor’s orchestration code?).

I assume install-system-dependencies is an internal script running, and it probably shouldn’t return exit code 1 in this instance? I can only guess that this came from a change introduced recently.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I’m stumped.

Steps to Reproduce

Background Agent with a custom Dockerfile (happy to provide mine, although I think this error happens before my Dockerfile)

Operating System

Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.5.5
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 823f58d4f60b795a6aefb9955933f3a2f0331d70
Date: 2025-08-25T17:40:25.290Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.14.0-29-generic

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

3

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)

Describe the Bug

Hello!

I’ve been using cursor exclusively in mobile web mode. I create background agents to make code changes, review them, then commit and deploy with an automated GitHub workflow.

Starting yesterday all of my agents began failing with“no changes made” except for the default one. I can’t tell if I’ve hit my limit or not because the usage tab on web only shows a list of requests and tokens used (no aggregate, no number to compare to, etc.). Sam AI says I didn’t, but it could be hallucinating. I thought it could be related to the degradation of service but it has continued into today.

Has anyone seen this before? Also, does anyone know how to unselect max mode from mobile? I don’t have the IDE installed so I feel like I’m missing a lot of options…

Steps to Reproduce

Create any agent except for default on web

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

IMG_6391.png
IMG_6391.png1320Ă—2868 237 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

I don’t have cursor, I use the web.

4

@condor Sorry for the direct tag, but I saw you getting involved on similar threads. Do you have any idea what might be happening here?

1 Like
5

I’m having the same issue.

6

hi @Burkhard and thank you for tagging me! Apologies that it took me some time today to get to your request.

@Battlezone @stanleyrya Thank you also for the reports and taking the time! Where possible always include request IDs for issues so we can compare them internally.

I will send this to the team. Its possible we had temporary issue as no widespread Background Agent outage is reported but colleagues will need to check.

1 Like
7

@condor

Thanks I appreciate that!

Here’s two requestIds (or at least the only ID I can share from mobile).

https://cursor.com/agents?selectedBcId=bc-c799e7f1-9c4f-4db1-b870-4744bb34c910

https://cursor.com/agents?selectedBcId=bc-93db21a6-9ca7-4967-bed1-50ec81019b52

1 Like
8

Appreciate! :folded_hands:

I already included a request ID in my initial post, but here is another: bc-6cb761b5-c27d-41d1-8967-6fe4935157ac

1 Like