My cloud environment burned all my tokens in 48h

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cloud Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)

Describe the Bug

My Machines / This Mac environment-setup composers keep running for days with no user prompts. Opening a workerId link appears to spawn scans named “Quick read-only scan”, “Latest read-only status”, “Local repository sync”, “Installation correctness”, “Quick recon scan.” They do not stop on their own.

I was turning on My Machines so chats would show in the desktop Agents Window. I started workers with cursor-agent worker start and opened the workerId links it printed. I did not send 199 or 264 follow-ups.

Two that did not stop:

  • Quick read-only scan (bc-e7bdef2e-3630-4dec-b17b-308c3abccdb1) — started Aug 20 14:51 UTC on factory-harness-drive — 199 runs — 16.7M input tokens — 195M total tokens including cache
  • Latest read-only status (bc-01bb26a9-5686-481a-845f-77d528c68bb7) — started Aug 20 14:52 UTC on plumbline — 264 runs — 10.3M input — 189M total

A third, Status information on Anvil (bc-df4e06e1-0596-4f4e-920f-b35ffe8691b7), did 70 runs / 51M tokens.

Numbers are from GET /v1/agents/{id}/usage. I archived them Aug 22 so they would stop.

Related, same week: REST-created agents (POST /v1/agents) never showed in the desktop Agents list (ListBackgroundComposers); web-created ones did, so these scans were easy to miss. Canvas on My Machines / Remote Control hard-fails with “Canvas is only available for local agents” / Disconnected.

Request ID from a failed This Mac follow-up: 8958b0ca-ab78-44bb-a6df-d9f0bc0a0b3e

Please treat unbounded My Machines environment setup as a bug. Opening a worker URL should not start a multi-day Extra High scan.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. On a Mac with Cursor 3.16.x, sign in.
  2. For several local git repos, start My Machines workers:
    cursor-agent worker start --worker-dir --name “~/Code/ @ Usman’s MacBook Air” --data-dir --idle-release-timeout 0
    Each worker prints a workerId link.
  3. Open those workerId links in the browser while signed in, so chats will show in the desktop Agents Window. Do not send 200 follow-up prompts. At most a short message, or nothing beyond opening the link.
  4. Watch the desktop Agents list and GET /v1/agents/{id}/usage.

Expected
Opening a My Machines worker link connects the machine and lets me start a chat if I want. Environment setup, if any, is bounded (a few turns) and visible/stoppable in the desktop Agents list. It does not keep running Extra High for days.

Actual
Cursor spawned environment-setup composers on those machines without a clear operator ask: “Quick read-only scan”, “Latest read-only status”, “Local repository sync”, “Installation correctness”, “Quick recon scan”, etc. Two kept going ~48h:

  • bc-e7bdef2e-3630-4dec-b17b-308c3abccdb1 Quick read-only scan — 199 runs — 16.7M input — 195M total tokens (cache included)
  • bc-01bb26a9-5686-481a-845f-77d528c68bb7 Latest read-only status — 264 runs — 10.3M input — 189M total tokens

Desktop Agents Window did not make these easy to notice (REST-created agents also never appeared in ListBackgroundComposers; web-created ones did). I archived those composers via API on 2026-08-22.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Desktop

  • Cursor desktop app: 3.17.8
  • Build: 2fdd31c9f33f7fbe501f2d57772dc5bf64b63620
  • At the time of the runaway My Machines setup agents (2026-08-20 logs): 3.16.29

Also

  • macOS 26.5.2 (25F84), Apple M5, arm64
  • cursor-agent CLI: 2026.08.11-e8db854

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey @Oz_Khan, thanks for the detailed report!

Opening a worker link only preselects that machine in the launcher on cursor.com; it doesn’t start anything by itself. Each of those agents was started from the Agents page on cursor.com while signed in to your account, and they kept running because they continued to receive follow-up messages from sessions signed in to your account — the desktop app, the REST API, and the iOS app. Archiving them was the right way to stop them.

Separately, the majority of your account’s recent usage comes from two Automations that have been starting new agents every few minutes around the clock. Automation-created agents are hidden from the default agents list, so they’re easy to miss.

You can review, pause, or delete them at cursor.com/automations under Automations. If you don’t recognize that activity or those follow-ups, I’d strongly recommend rotating your API keys and signing out of other sessions from your dashboard!