When asking Cursor “what subagent models available?” or try to get it to spawn subagents with an unsupported model name, it says only these 4 are available:
claude-4.6-opus-high-thinking
claude-opus-4-7-thinking-xhigh
composer-2-fast
gemini-3.1-pro
Why aren’t all models available here?
Especially the lack of GPT models and Composer 2/2.5 non-fast versions is annoying.
Steps to Reproduce
Asking Cursor “what subagent models available?”
Expected Behavior
It returns all models or at least a list including GPT 5.5 low,medium,high, Composer 2 normal, Composer 2.5 normal,fast.
Hi @sevJoe Thanks for the post! What you’re probably seeing is that the Settings UI exposes only a subset of models here, but you can search for any other model that you have enabled like so:
Make sure that the model you want to select is “Enabled” in Models and then search for it in the Default Subagent selector. You can also hover over the model family name and select a different level of reasoning for your default Explore Subagent.
Once you change these settings, the next time you start a new chat and ask what subagent it’s using, you should see the desired model there.
Hi @kevinn, thanks for the quick reply.
Are we talking about the same thing here?
I am talking about the model choices you have when you ask the AI “use a subagent with model X do to Y”.
The “Explore Subagent” is only one of the subagents that Cursor predefines.
Hi @sevJoe — yes, it seems we were talking about 2 different things. The “Explore subagent model” setting only controls the built-in Explore subagent; it’s separate from the model parameter the agent passes when you say “use a subagent with model X.”
For that parameter, the agent isn’t offered the full catalog but rather a curated subset: the agent-capable models that are enabled AND toggled visible in your main model picker. Models such as ones without Agent-mode support, BYOK models, etc., are filtered out.
To get GPT-5.5 or non-fast Composer 2/2.5 to appear as subagent options:
Go to Cursor Settings → Models — make sure they’re enabled.
Make sure they’re also visible in your model picker — visibility is what feeds the subagent list, not just being enabled.
Start a new chat and ask which models it can use for a subagent.
If they’re already enabled + visible and still don’t show up, let me know, and we can look further at this.
The visibility thing makes sense. Anthropic, Google and Cursor models are working. It seems that OpenAI’s ChatGPT doesn’t work, though. See my screenshot:
