When a subagent pauses and waits for the user to confirm an action (e.g. an “Allow” prompt for a command or tool call), the session bar does not switch its status indicator to the orange dot that signals “waiting on you”. Instead it keeps displaying the animated dot-matrix indicator, which means “working / in progress”.
Impact: if you have switched to a different session, there is no visual signal that the paused session needs your input. You can’t tell it’s blocked and waiting for an “Allow”, so you can’t jump in and unblock it — the subagent stalls indefinitely until you happen to open that session and notice the confirmation prompt.
Suggested fix: when any (sub)agent in a session is blocked awaiting user confirmation, the session’s indicator in the session bar should switch to the orange “awaiting confirmation” dot (the same state used when the main agent asks for confirmation), rather than continuing to show the animated “working” dot-matrix.
Steps to Reproduce
Start a session where the agent spawns a subagent that will perform an action requiring confirmation (a command/tool call that triggers an “Allow” prompt).
While that subagent is waiting for the “Allow” confirmation, switch to a different session.
Look at the paused session’s indicator in the session bar.
Expected Behavior
The paused session should show the orange “awaiting confirmation” dot in the session bar, clearly indicating it is blocked and waiting for user input — so it can be spotted and unblocked from another session.
Hey there!
It’s a known bug we’re tracking. When a subagent pauses for an Allow/confirm, the session row keeps the animated “working” indicator instead of switching to the needs-attention state, so a blocked subagent is easy to miss when you’re viewing another session.
While we work on fixing the indicator itself, two settings will let you catch a blocked subagent right away (both under Cursor Settings → General):
Completion Sound - we recently extended this to also chime when a subagent is blocked waiting for approval, so you’ll hear it even while you’re in a different session.
System Notifications - you’ll get a desktop notification (and a dock badge) when a subagent needs attention, which is handy when Cursor isn’t focused.
If your workflow allows it, you can also add the commands your subagents run to your Auto-run allowlist (Cursor Settings → Agents → Auto-run) so they don’t pause for approval in the first place.
Thanks @mohitjain — good to know it’s tracked, and the Completion Sound extension to cover “subagent blocked on approval” is genuinely useful; I hadn’t realized that had shipped.
One nuance in case it helps prioritize the visual fix: the sound and the desktop notification both tell me something needs attention, but neither tells me which session. When I’m running several parallel sessions, I still have to click through each one to find the blocked subagent — and that’s exactly the disambiguation the orange dot in the session bar would solve at a glance. So the audio/notification cues are a good stopgap for “is anything waiting?”, but the per-row indicator is what actually closes the loop for the multi-session case.
On the Auto-run allowlist suggestion: I do lean on it heavily, but the subagents that pause are usually the ones hitting commands I deliberately keep off the allowlist (the higher-consequence ones), so for those the confirmation prompt is working as intended — I just need to be able to spot it. Appreciate the update, and happy to test once the indicator fix lands.