Cursor CLI (cursor-agent) slow and using 100% of a single cpu

[vinismarques]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor CLI

Describe the Bug

When working in my repo, it appears to start fine, but after just a few iterations (1 to 3), the agent becomes very slow and takes a very long time to finish running. This happens even on simple tasks.

I can see that a process is using 100% of a single CPU for minutes, and the token info in the chat increases VERY slowly, so it is virtually stuck.

It continues to animate the “Editing” tool status as it progresses (happens with others as well), and the token count increased from 17.5k to 17.67k over the span of 10+ minutes.

Steps to Reproduce

Start working in a repo, do some planning, ask for it to be implemented, and wait for eternity.

Expected Behavior

Changes applied as fast as they usually are in the Cursor IDE.

Operating System

Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

cursor-agent version: 2025.10.22-f894c20

Additional Information

Process I see in the monitor:

/home/vinic/.local/share/cursor-agent/versions/2025.10.22-f894c20/node --use-system-ca /home/vinic/.local/share/cursor-agent/versions/2025.10.22-f894c20/index.js

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

[deanrie]

Hey Thanks for the report. 100% CPU and extremely slow token streaming is unusual.

Based on similar cases, this can be related to your shell configuration. Cursor CLI spawns sub-terminals that execute your shell config, and heavy init scripts can cause high CPU usage.

Please check:

• What’s in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc? Look for heavy nvm/conda init and other startup scripts
• What’s your repo size/file count? (run: du -sh . && find . -type f | wc -l)
• Quick test: Temporarily rename your shell config (e.g., mv ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.bak) and restart cursor-agent to see if it helps

If none of these apply, we’ll likely need to escalate this as a bug.