/multitask doesn't work in cloud environments

Ideas Feedback
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)

Describe the Bug

I can’t find anything saying this should only work locally, so I assume it’s a bug. Using /multitask at the beginning of a new cloud agent run doesn’t trigger any subagents. Doing the same thing locally does trigger subagents.

In cloud, if you explicitly ask for subagents instead of typing /multitask then you get subagents.

Steps to Reproduce

New cloud env with a prompt like:

/multitask here is your task...

Expected Behavior

Not only does the /multitask pill not appear in the UI, the agent run doesn’t use subagents or set up the rest of the convo for multitasking.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.9.16
VS Code Extension API: 1.105.1
Commit: 042b3c1a4c53f2c3808067f519fbfc67b72cad80
Date: 2026-06-27T06:41:01.941Z
Layout: glass
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 40.10.3
Chromium: 144.0.7559.236
Node.js: 24.15.0
V8: 14.4.258.32-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.256
OS: Darwin arm64 25.5.0

For AI issues: which model did you use?

composer-2.5

For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled

Cloud env:
Asking for subagents works fine: bc-704ad407-b0b0-4ba4-b96b-8398f27b5e7f
/multitask doesn’t work: bc-6c8e8ad7-f34b-403a-b5b0-679d67850d0b

Local env:
/multitask works fine: 3d3dcb4a-80ee-492b-a313-d7c2deb8e1cf

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

6

Hey @Kevin_Scott!

Multitask mode is currently local only and disabled in Cloud Agents (which still need support for async subagents)! We’d like to bring that experience to Cloud as well, it’s just not there yet.

8

The interesting part is that subagents work in cloud when requested directly, but the slash command does not.

That makes it feel less like a capability gap and more like the command is not being interpreted the same way in the cloud-agent entry path. If slash commands are meant to be portable, this should probably fail visibly instead of silently turning into a normal prompt.