In cursor automation, the subagents don't inherit the MCP servers defined in the UI, nor the workspace mcp.json

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the subagent spun up by main agent doesn’t have access to MCPs defined inside the automation page, but since I did put an mcp.json in the project’s .cursor folder, the subagent can read it, but it accesses the MCP via code, sometimes writing script and shell commands and such to access the tools, and not the typical cursor parallel executions.

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Hi there!

We detected that this may be a bug report, so we’ve moved your post to the Bug Reports category.

To help us investigate and fix this faster, could you edit your original post to include the details from the template below?

Bug Report Template - Click to expand

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

  • Cursor IDE
  • Cursor CLI
  • Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)
  • BugBot
  • Somewhere else…

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Operating System

  • Windows 10/11
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Version Information

  • For Cursor IDE: Menu → About Cursor → Copy
  • For Cursor CLI: Run agent about in your terminal
IDE:
Version: 2.xx.x
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: ......

CLI:
CLI Version 2026.01.17-d239e66

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Request ID: f9a7046a-279b-47e5-ab48-6e8dc12daba1
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Additional Information
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Does this stop you from using Cursor?

  • Yes - Cursor is unusable
  • Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor
  • No - Cursor works, but with this issue

The more details you provide, the easier it is for us to reproduce and fix the issue. Thanks!

5

Hi @Wake_Randy,

This is a known issue that our team is actively investigating. Subagents spawned by the main agent in automations currently don’t have proper access to MCP tools through the normal tool calling mechanism, which is why you’re seeing the fallback behavior where the subagent reads your .cursor/mcp.json and tries to access MCP tools via shell commands and scripts.

There’s no clean workaround at the moment beyond keeping MCP-dependent tasks in the main agent rather than delegating them to subagents.

Could you share a Background Agent ID (format: bc-...) from a run where this happened? That would help us trace the specific failure path. You can find it at the top of the agent run page on cursor.com/agents.

8

thank you for helping. i will wait for the patch, hopefully soon

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