Cursor showing ugly, misaligned video frame icons

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Product: Cursor IDE chat (Agent / Composer reply)

Summary: When the agent embeds markdown images that point at local absolute paths (e.g. frames extracted under %TEMP%), the chat UI does not show the pictures. Instead you get small broken-image icons with alt text beside them, slightly misaligned, which looks broken and ugly.

What I did

Asked the agent to analyze a local screen recording.
Agent extracted frames to something like C:\Users…\AppData\Local\Temp\cart-frames\f_05.jpg.
Agent replied with markdown like: cart loaded
In the chat transcript those images fail to load.
What I see

White broken-image glyph (torn-picture / mountain style icon).
Alt text next to it (cart loaded, efile selected, stale summary, etc.).
Icons and text look vertically off / cramped between list items.
No usable screenshot in the thread even though the files exist on disk.
Expected

Local image paths the agent attaches or references should render as real thumbnails in chat, or
Cursor should refuse/warn and ask the agent to use a supported attach path, instead of leaving broken icons.
Why it matters Repro notes and visual bug write-ups depend on inline frames. Broken icons make the thread hard to read and look like a product glitch.

Env (fill in)

Cursor version: …
OS: Windows 10/11
Chat mode: Agent
Image source: local absolute path under %TEMP% (not uploaded via the paperclip / image attach control)
Repro hint for Cursor Have the agent include alt in a reply and open that reply in chat.

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to reproduce

Minimal repro — no video needed, any local image works.

Open Cursor on Windows. Start a new Agent chat in any workspace.
Put an image somewhere outside the workspace, e.g. copy any .jpg to %TEMP%\repro\shot.jpg (Explorer or copy in a terminal).
Ask the agent: “Read C:\Users\AppData\Local\Temp\repro\shot.jpg, then in your reply embed it with markdown using that absolute path.”
Agent replies with shot.
Look at the reply in the chat pane.
Result: broken-image glyph plus alt text (shot), vertically misaligned against surrounding list/paragraph text. No thumbnail, even though the file exists and the agent read it fine.

Expected: inline thumbnail, or a clear “can’t render this path” notice instead of a broken icon.

Extra conditions worth trying, since they may change the outcome:

Same path inside the workspace folder instead of %TEMP% (does it render there?).
Backslash path vs forward-slash path vs file:///C:/… URL.
Image embedded in a plain paragraph vs nested under a numbered list item (misalignment was worst inside a list).
Original repro (what I hit): asked the agent to analyze a local .mp4; it extracted frames to %TEMP%\cart-frames\f_05.jpg … f_27.jpg and referenced ~4 of them across a numbered list. All rendered as broken icons.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

idk. latest as of this morning

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Auto balance

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

7

Hey @Pawel_Kopyto,

Thanks for the detailed repro. What you’re seeing isn’t caused by anything in your setup. On Windows, when an agent reply embeds a local path like ![alt](C:\Users\...\Temp\frame.jpg), chat doesn’t render the image. You get the broken-image icon and alt text instead, which also throws off alignment in lists.

This is an issue we’re tracking. No timeline to share yet, but I’ll post here when there’s an update.

Until then, the agent can still read those frames for analysis. If you need the pictures visible in the thread, attach them with drag-and-drop or paste (image input) rather than relying on a C:\... markdown embed.