Parallel agents/plans steal focus when completing - disrupts workflow when reviewing multiple plans

Ideas Feedback
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When running multiple parallel agents or plans simultaneously, each plan that completes automatically switches focus to that plan’s tab/view. This behavior is extremely disruptive when reviewing multiple completed plans because:

  1. I start 3-5 plans running in parallel (using worktrees or local mode)
  2. The first plan completes - I begin reading/reviewing it
  3. While I’m mid-review, the second plan completes and Cursor force-switches my view to that plan
  4. I lose my place in the first plan and now I’m looking at plan #2
  5. Then plan #3 completes and steals focus again
  6. This cascades as each plan finishes, making it impossible to thoroughly review any single plan

This completely defeats the purpose of parallel agents. The workflow should be: plans complete in background → I review them at my own pace in whatever order I choose.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Cursor and navigate to a project
  2. Start 3+ parallel agents/plans (either via worktrees or by starting multiple local agents)
  3. Give each agent a task that takes 30-60 seconds to complete
  4. Begin reading the first plan that completes
  5. Observe that when subsequent plans complete, focus is forcibly switched away from what you’re currently reading

Expected Behavior

When a parallel agent or plan completes, it should:

  • Complete silently in the background
  • NOT steal focus from the current view
  • Optionally show a non-intrusive notification (sound, badge, or toast)
  • Allow the user to switch to the completed plan manually when ready

Ideally, there should be a setting like:
“cursor.agent.focusOnComplete”: false

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.4.23 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 379934e04d2b3290cf7aefa14560f942e4212920
Date: 2026-01-29T21:24:23.350Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Additional Information

Current Workaround Attempts (None Work):
I’ve tried the following settings with no success:

  • "cursor.windowSwitcher.sidebarHoverCollapsed": false
  • "workbench.editor.revealIfOpen": false
  • "cursor.agent.focusOnComplete": false (this setting doesn’t exist but should)

This bug makes the parallel agents feature nearly unusable for its intended purpose. The whole point of running multiple plans is to batch work and review results efficiently. Instead, users are forced to either:

  • Wait for ALL plans to complete before reviewing any (defeating the “parallel” benefit)
  • Constantly fight against focus changes while trying to read
  • Run only one plan at a time (defeating the entire feature)

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

4

This is great feedback, @mrsmith and I agree it’s quite jarring!

I think for the moment this is intended behavior, but I’ve sent your feedback (and this video) to the team working on Plan Mode!

5

Definitely not intended behaviour!

Any feature that changes the user’s current window should be configurable.

1 Like
6

I agree, it would be great if this stopped happening and possible if switching back to an open plan would retain its scroll position. :slight_smile:

7

hi, thanks for the feedback! we’ve pushed updates to address both:

  • plans will only steal focus if you are currently focused on the chat generating it. if you are working in another chat or editor, it will just open in the background.
  • plan editors remember scroll position when you go back to them

these changes will roll out on nightly tomorrow, and to stable release in 2.5!

1 Like
Auto switching tabs when agent completes work breaks editing flow
8

Feel like I made a major contribution here.