Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?
Cursor IDE
Describe the Bug
When using cursor with Remote SSH all of the agents chat are sometime stuck with “planning next move” or with stops with error Agent execution timed out. I have tried complete reinstall but still have the issue.
I have also tried with disable extension and deleting local workspace.
This is what GPT says is it correct? Does cursor uses these git cmd and if I disable it will it affect performance of the coding agents?
GPT diagnosis:-
Cursor Agent is timing out on Remote SSH because the remote extension host becomes unresponsive. Process logs show long-running Git and ripgrep scans on the remote workspace, including /usr/bin/git status -z -uall running for ~28–33 minutes and multiple rg --files --hidden --follow processes. This appears to overload the remote extension host/file watcher, so the Cursor Agent provider cannot register and returns ERROR_EXTENSION_HOST_TIMEOUT / Agent Execution Timed Out. Reinstalling Cursor and clearing state did not fix it; the likely root cause is Git/untracked-file scanning and workspace indexing on a large HPC/NFS remote folder.
Steps to Reproduce
version 3.6.21
Operating System
Linux
Version Information
version 3.6.21
Does this stop you from using Cursor
Yes - Cursor is unusable
Your GPT diagnosis is on the right track. Cursor does run git status and ripgrep scans on the remote workspace for source control and file indexing. On large directories over NFS, these can take a long time and block the remote extension host, which causes the agent timeout. This is something we’ve seen before and our team is actively working on improving.
To answer your question directly: disabling git won’t break the coding agents. They don’t depend on the Git extension for file edits or terminal commands. But you don’t need to disable it entirely - try these more targeted options first:
1. Open a narrower workspace. If you’re opening your entire HPC home directory, open just the specific project folder you’re working in. This is the single biggest improvement for NFS setups.
2. Create a .cursorignore file in your workspace root to exclude large directories from indexing:
large-data-dir/
build/
.cache/
node_modules/
3. Reduce file watching and git scanning. Add these to your Cursor settings (JSON):
{
"files.watcherExclude": {
"**/.git/objects/**": true,
"**/node_modules/**": true,
"**/build/**": true
},
"git.autoRepositoryDetection": false
}
4. Last resort — set "git.enabled": false. The agents will still work fine; you’d just lose the Git status indicators and diff views in the sidebar.
You may also find this related thread helpful, where another SSH user hit the same timeout.