Cursor unable to edit a plan

Support Bug Reports
1

I’m pretty sure this is new. You can see my version below. When I switch to plan mode and then the agent generates a plan and then I ask it to refine that plan, you don’t see any of those changes reflected in the plan it created and opened. The agent claims that it can’t edit it’s own plan and starts creating plan files in my repo instead. Here’s a trace from my asking the agent why my desired changes to the plan weren’t being reflected in the plan .md it originally opened…

Here’s what’s going on:

What happened: The plan you see in the Plans tab (bdd_testing_from_user_stories_650fe6eb.plan.md) is stored in Cursor’s plan storage, not in your repo. I don’t have access to that storage, so I was editing a different file in the repo: .cursor/plans/bdd_testing_from_user_stories.plan.md. That’s why the tab you had open never changed.

What I did: I’ve now created a workspace file with the same name as the one in your Plans tab:

.cursor/plans/bdd_testing_from_user_stories_650fe6eb.plan.md

That file contains the full updated plan (playwright-bdd, translate-all-stories, DEVELOPMENT_STANDARDS requirement, etc.).

How can the cursor agent NOT have access to it’s own plan storage? I’m fairly certain that prior to today’s update, I was seeing changes made directly to the original plan document.

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Plan mode cannot edit plan files (.plan.md) even though it’s supposed to
Plan mode no longer updates plan files
2

Hi there!

We detected that this may be a bug report, so we’ve moved your post to the Bug Reports category.

To help us investigate and fix this faster, could you edit your original post to include the details from the template below?

Bug Report Template - Click to expand

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

  • Cursor IDE
  • Cursor CLI
  • Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)
  • BugBot
  • Somewhere else…

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Steps to Reproduce
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Expected Behavior
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Operating System

  • Windows 10/11
  • MacOS
  • Linux

Version Information

  • For Cursor IDE: Menu → About Cursor → Copy
  • For Cursor CLI: Run agent about in your terminal
IDE:
Version: 2.xx.x
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: ......

CLI:
CLI Version 2026.01.17-d239e66

For AI issues: which model did you use?
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For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled
Request ID: f9a7046a-279b-47e5-ab48-6e8dc12daba1
For Background Agent issues, also post the ID: bc-…

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Does this stop you from using Cursor?

  • Yes - Cursor is unusable
  • Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor
  • No - Cursor works, but with this issue

The more details you provide, the easier it is for us to reproduce and fix the issue. Thanks!

4

Latest build seems to have fixed this..

Version: 2.5.25 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 7150844152b426ed50d2b68dd6b33b5c5beb73c0
Date: 2026-02-24T07:17:49.417Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Early Access
Electron: 39.4.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

6

Nevermind…it just started mysteriously doing this again. Same build.

7

I am also experencing this issue.

In plan mode, i created a plan for a proposed change, specificly i found a function call that was incorectly named so asked it to look for any others.

it did, i pointed out some were obsolte code and can be ignored.

instead of updating the plan, the agent acted to rewrite large portions of code, ignoring plan mode.

i stoped and reverted it

Telling it to update the plan, instead it created a readme doc listing things entirely differntly to the plan.

Arguing the plan was not in workspace so cannot be edited.

I beleive this relates to this thread also:

8

I am having this same issue.

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This is in the cursor IDE.

The agent, in plan mode, will create a plan but then it stops updating the plan. When questioned, it states that it does not have the ability to modify files. I suspect this is an update in response to the known bug where the plan mode would go off the reservation and start modifying files without permission, but now it’s locked down to the point where it won’t even edit the plan that it created?

This is on a Windows 11 laptop with ssh into a Debian server that houses the plans/code. This worked until my most recent update. I’m in auto mode. A notification about the terminal sandbox not working with my debian kernal 6.1 just started popping up so I’m not sure if they’re related and I’m not quite ready to upgrade my kernal on that server just yet.

In order to use Cursor, I need to plan in plan mode and then switch to agent mode and specifically ask it to update the plan…it’s a bit cumbersome but works.

9

Turns out that it wasn’t the kernel, or any of that. And it became very untrustworthy to be using the plan, eventually even going to the agent mode started to fail and the agent would say it was in plan mode when it wasn’t. I finally just rolled back to 2.5.20 and it started working again. I’m going to say that .24-.26 are failures and I’ll wait for corrections…