Your screenshots reveal the exact cause! You are facing a “double whammy” here.
1. The Main Blocker: “Privacy Mode (Legacy)”
As the text in your first screenshot explicitly states: “Background Agent … not available.”
Legacy mode hard-blocks the background processes the Agent needs “maybe” to plan next moves or for the index sync.
Try: Click the blue “Switch to Privacy Mode” link in that window. This upgrades you to the modern mode that protects your data but allows the Agent to run.
2. The Index is Stuck (“Loading…”)
Your local database is jammed in a loop, preventing context retrieval. The Fix:
Go to Cursor Settings (Ctrl + ,) > Indexing & Docs.
Click the “Delete Index” button (trash can icon).
Restart Cursor completely.
After doing both (switching the privacy mode AND deleting the stuck index), it should work immediately!
Yes – we’ve been going in circles – without a clean solution for now. Let me ping @condor for tomorrow maybe he knows the solution for your problem.
What happened:
After switching Privacy Mode and restarting, I expected “Loading…” to resolve. It didn’t, so you’re hitting a core bug in v2.1.49 with no workaround.
Downgrade link:
Question:
Does that also happen with any other from your project(s) – or “just" in your current local repo?
Stuck on planning next moves, and yes i am connecting over a vpn, but i have been for months, and it seems to have regressed.. its so slow now as to have become unusable
in agent mode, cursor got stuck with text “planning next moves” after submit some task, nothing happens then. this happens frequently starting from last week
Steps to Reproduce
in agent mode, submit some coding task
Expected Behavior
cursor should respond in seconds
Operating System
MacOS
Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)
Agent never starts. Every session immediately gets stuck on “planning next moves” and never progresses. Cannot use Agent at all.
Steps to Reproduce
Open Cursor
Start new Agent session (CMD+I or Composer)
Give any prompt
Agent shows “planning next moves”
Stays stuck indefinitely - never starts actual work
Happens 100% of the time, every session, every prompt.
Expected Behavior
Make changes
Gets stuck at step 1, never moves past “planning next moves”
Operating System
Windows 10/11
Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)
Current Cursor Version
Version: 2.1.50
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 56f0a83df8e9eb48585fcc4858a9440db4cc7770
Date: 2025-12-06T23:39:52.834Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
For AI issues: which model did you use?
All models - Claude Sonnet, GPT, Gemini, Composer model
Issue happens regardless of model selection
Additional Information
Been troubleshooting for days and started about a week ago.
Tried:
Multiple new chats
All different models
Privacy mode off
Logging out/in
Restarting Cursor
Different prompts (simple and complex)
Similar problem for me - agent chat stuck on ‘planning next move’ and once this stops the prompt box reverts back to its pre sent state at which point the same prompt needs to be resent and so on. Also, in settings the Codebase Indexing box has a persistent ‘Loading…’ placeholder so no options visible. The main editor is connected to remote and continues to give code suggestions so the internet connection is not the issue.
