Cursor WSL Extension and Agent Issue

Bug Reports
1

Cursor WSL Extension and Agent Issue

Environment

  • Cursor Version: 0.47.1 (aafb3fe1326c939656bd06f325a9e17679aeec70, x64)
  • OS: Windows 10 with WSL2
  • WSL Distribution: Debian (Default)

Issues

1. WSL Extension Version Downgrade

  • Cursor forcefully downgrades the WSL extension to version 0.81.8
  • When manually installing the latest VSCode WSL extension (0.88.5), Cursor automatically reverts it back to 0.81.8 upon restart
  • This happens even when making the extension directory read-only
  • The downgrade occurs despite the latest version (0.88.5) being stable and working in VSCode

2. Agent WSL Integration

  • The Cursor AI agent cannot properly interact with the Debian WSL environment
  • When running WSL commands through the agent, it only returns “Debian (Default)” instead of actual command output
  • Normal terminal in Cursor works fine with WSL
  • This appears to be related to the outdated WSL extension version

Steps to Reproduce

  1. WSL Extension Downgrade:

    • Install latest WSL extension (0.88.5) in Cursor
    • Restart Cursor
    • Check extension version - it’s automatically downgraded to 0.81.8

  2. Agent WSL Issue:

    • Try to run any WSL command through the AI agent
    • Commands only return “Debian (Default)” instead of actual output
    • Same commands work correctly in normal Cursor terminal

Expected Behavior

  • Cursor should either support the latest WSL extension version or document why it requires an older version
  • Agent should properly interact with WSL environment like the normal terminal does
  • WSL commands through the agent should return actual command output

Additional Context

  • Only Debian WSL distribution is installed (removed others to eliminate interference)
  • Normal terminal in Cursor works correctly with WSL
  • VSCode with the same WSL extension (0.88.5) works properly
  • Attempted various settings.json configurations without success

Impact

This issue affects:

  1. Development workflow when using WSL
  2. AI agent’s ability to assist with WSL-based development tasks
  3. Overall integration between Cursor and WSL environment

Possible Solutions

  1. Update Cursor to support latest WSL extension version
  2. Document why older version is required and fix agent integration
  3. Provide configuration options to override extension version control
2

+1

Except im using ubuntu. Basically troubleshooting shows that any terminal command that cursor agent tries to execute is actually “C:\WINDOWS\System32\wsl.exe ‘-l’” which return the (Default) WSL instead of the actual command? Not sure if this is intentional to convert the commands to the supported distro types, but its an issue.

If you use Ctrl-Shift-P → Connect to WSL using Distro…

This spawns cursor with the correct distro and terminal access is available via Agent. Maybe this should be default somehow?

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