Extension host terminated unexpectedly always

[facio313 (Bonifacio)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Before explaining my case, I want to say I love Cursor IDE and it has been supporting me a lot. But I’m now Soooooo mad at this error. When it comes to opening Cursor IDE again after closing, I always see the alert “Extension host terminated unexpectedly…”. I’ve searched for it so many times to fix it, but the way I finally found works temporarily. So I could manage to use prompt and agent. But I was so tired of doing the same things for a temporary fix, so I was trying to solve the problem fundamentally. Looking around this forum, I saw “Clean directory if it works on other directory” and I applied it on my case, but I deleted it before backing up. I know this is my fault, but so I’m so frustrated at it. used so many tokens and I’m running out of API usage. The thing that I want to say is just this is to remind you the importance of backing up and bug reports.

Here’s what I did

1. Relaunch
2. Start Extension Bisect
3. Restart Extension Host
4. Delete all extensions
5. Delete Cursor from Windows settings, Cursor Folder and so on, then clean install Cursor
6. Delete Cursor Appdata
7. Delete project folders and git pull same project from remote
8. Network Diagnostics (It became criteria whether it works or not)
9. Change other project folders —working on some projects (but not working in the end),
   not working on similar projects, but working on other people’s Cursor IDE of my team
10. Delete globalStorage/state.vscdb (and like more)
    Finally working but temporarily.
    If I want to use it, I must remove those files.

It lasts about two weeks. I don’t think it’s about extensions or SSL (because my team members use it the same).
Now what I can do is just waiting for the reset day to get new API quota.
Here’s some logs

• workbench.desktop.main.js:43744 [Extension Host] (node:19912) [DEP0040] DeprecationWarning: The punycode module is deprecated. Please use a userland alternative instead.
  (Use Cursor --trace-deprecation ... to show where the warning was created)
• workbench.desktop.main.js:64 WARN [MainThreadCursor] Failed to flush aggregating provider batch Canceled: Canceled
• workbench.desktop.main.js:49748 Extension host (LocalProcess [role: retrieval-always-local] pid: 13020) terminated unexpectedly. Code: 18446744072635810000, Signal: unknown
  *extensionHostWorkerMain.js:155 @anysphereanysphere/context unavailable — tracing will be disabled: TypeError: Failed to resolve module specifier ‘@anysphere/context’ at extensionHostWorkerMain.js:155:144140
• workbench.desktop.main.js:43744 [Extension Host] Error: Please provide instrumentation key
• workbench.desktop.main.js:64 ERR Extension host (LocalProcess [role: retrieval-always-local] pid: 3488) terminated unexpectedly. The following extensions were running: anysphere.cursor-always-local, anysphere.cursor-resolver, anysphere.cursor-retrieval

Steps to Reproduce

Launch Cursor, then the notification appears.
“Extension host terminated unexpectedly 3 times within the last 5 minutes.”
Opening other projects, Sometimes it works but same error in the end.
After deleting state.vscdb and getting auth from cursor web page, It works only once.
Then I relaunch Cursor IDE, same notification appears.

Expected Behavior

noramlly launching

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 2.6.14 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: eb1c4e0702d201d1226d2a7afb25c501c2e56080
Date: 2026-03-08T15:36:54.709Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.6.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. This looks like a known crash pattern in the retrieval-always-local extension host. The exit code points to a native crash in crepectl (the local indexing binary), which explains why deleting state.vscdb fixes it for a bit, until the state gets corrupted again.

Your Network Diagnostics screenshot confirms it too. The “Timeout waiting for EverythingProvider” errors on Authentication UI, Cursor Tab, Agent Endpoint, and Codebase Indexing all happen because the extension host never fully finishes starting up.

Here’s a stable workaround that should survive restarts:

• Open Cursor Settings (not VS Code settings) > Indexing & Docs > Codebase Indexing, then turn it off
• Restart Cursor

This disables the crepectl binary that’s causing the crash. You’ll lose local codebase indexing (so the AI won’t automatically search your full codebase), but everything else like chat, agent, and Tab completions should keep working.

A couple quick questions to help us narrow this down:

• How big is the project that triggers the crash (rough file count, number of git branches)?
• Does it happen in every project, or only specific ones?

The team knows about crashes in this area. Your report (especially the state.vscdb detail) really helps with prioritization. Let me know if it’s stable with indexing disabled.

[facio313 (Bonifacio)]

I think it happens because of ‘Index Repositories for Instant Grep(BETA)’. At first, I turned off ‘Index New Folder’ since it looked like all about indexing as you told me. But It didn’t work. So I turn off that beta function. And It works! It’s beta and I think It should be turned off at first after installing and launching Cursor IDE If a project is big. When a project is small, It still works on the project(small one).

Cursor IDE doesn’t work on the proejct(files 4,189 / folder 722 / storage 1.4GB)

Cursor IDE works on the project(files 786 /folder 288 / storage 233MB)

I hope It will gonna help someone.

[facio313 (Bonifacio)]

Hi, Your comment helped me to find clue what was the cause that made me not be able to use Cursor IDE. And I replied on your comment, So I hope you see this.

And I thought I would have waited for resets for API usage, But I’ve been bit annoyed with wasting my time to solve this problem since Cursor IDE didn’t work(about 2 weeks ago). Even I paid for 1 year at once. So I hope you guys give API usage back to me even 50% on this month.

Thanks.

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