Hangs on attempt to edit outside workspace

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

With “External File Protection” enabled (default), when an agent in Agent mode attempts to edit a file outside the workspace, after composing the change in memory, when it is ready to write it to disk, it just hangs with a spinner.

It should prompt for permission.

Steps to Reproduce

With “External File Protection” enabled (default), bring up an agent in Agent mode and ask it to edit a file outside the workspace.

Expected Behavior

It should prompt for permission.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

cursor-bug.png
cursor-bug.png1538×498 47.1 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.41 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 2ca326e0d1ce10956aea33d54c0e2d8c13c58a30
Date: 2026-01-16T19:14:00.150Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

For AI issues: which model did you use?

claude-4.5-opus-high

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

3

Hey, thanks for the report. This looks like a bug with External File Protection. The agent should show a permission prompt, but instead it hangs.

For debugging, we need:

  • The Request ID from the stuck agent request (chat context menu in the top right > Copy Request ID)
  • Logs from Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console while it’s hanging (a screenshot or the error text)

Workaround: you can temporarily disable External File Protection in Settings if you need to keep working ASAP.

I’ll pass this to the team to get it fixed.