Cursor IDE
No matter what I write and no matter how I config the agents .md I can’t get any of these two new features to work.
I have seen other people get it work, but I am not able
“Call 4 async subagents that call other 4 and ask their favourite colors.”
Works for some people, not for me.
MacOS
Version: 2.5.17 (Universal)
Tried a couple, no change
No - Cursor works, but with this issue
jojolionss
February 20, 2026, 1:54pm
4
Have you ever seen anyone succeed? I’ve installed it several times and tested it repeatedly without success. Even when I let the cursor troubleshoot itself, it said that subagents could not call subagents.
jojolionss
February 20, 2026, 2:08pm
5
By the way, I’m using the Windows version of the IDE.
condor
February 20, 2026, 2:09pm
6
@jojolionss could you post a separate thread for IDE? this is a CLI thread.
condor
February 20, 2026, 2:12pm
7
hi @Havard_Njastad and welcome to Cursor Forum.
Yes, the Cursor CLI supports running agents asynchronously (in the background) and starting nested agents.
1. Explore Subagent (for codebase exploration):
"What is the codebase structure?"
"How do API endpoints work in this codebase?"
"Find all React components in src/components/"
2. Shell Subagent (for terminal tasks):
"Run the tests for this project"
"Check the git status and recent commits"
"Execute npm install and build the project"
3. Debug Subagent (for bug investigation):
"Investigate why this endpoint returns 500 errors"
"Debug the race condition in the auth flow"
4. Browser Subagent (for manual GUI testing):
"Test the login flow in the browser"
"Verify the UI changes look correct"
Triggering Nested Subagents (Swarm Pattern)
Example prompts that trigger the swarm/nested pattern:
"Swarm this task across multiple workers"
"Use a coordinator to parallelize this refactoring"
"Launch a swarm to implement these features in parallel"
MBarella
February 20, 2026, 2:41pm
9
I think this is related to the IDE, this came from the discord Server where he provided some screenshots:
The same exact prompt using Auto model worked perfectly to me.
1 Like
liquefy
February 20, 2026, 3:19pm
10
The exact same problem in an IDE, subagents cannot launch nested subagents (2.5.20, windows) and neither they can run async. The main agent says “I will run X agents in parallel”, it runs one, wait for finish and runs another. I do not understand because this worked in 2.4.x
Fixed in the 2.5.20 update
