Repeated "Read Terminal" Causing Token Usage Explosion

[khandar-william]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

In recent update of Cursor, whenever I ask it to run a test (may take 2 minutes), now Cursor will repeatedly call “Read Terminal” even though the terminal output would simply be no change (waiting for a long process).

Steps to Reproduce

Ask it to run a test and fix the failing tests. e.g. ./gradlew :test something.
If the grade test took a long time (say 5 minutes), the token usages blows up

Expected Behavior

This didn’t happen 2 weeks ago, same codebase, same gradle command.
How can a Gemini-3-Flash model causing $29, 88M tokens, with one prompt???

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

Version: 2.4.27
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 4f2b772756b8f609e1354b3063de282ccbe7a690
Date: 2026-01-31T21:24:58.143Z
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: Linux x64 6.8.0-87-generic

For AI issues: which model did you use?

gemini-3-flash

For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled

b95f61c8-7e7c-42c6-a65a-cf7909fe3381

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. ($29) / 88M tokens for a single prompt is clearly a bug, not expected behavior.

This looks like a regression in the terminal monitoring logic. From your description, the Agent keeps calling “Read Terminal” even when the output isn’t changing, like when the process is just waiting. In Agent was interrupted after working in the console for a long time users described similar extra polling, but I haven’t seen a token blow-up at this scale.

Can you share a screenshot of the chat that shows those repeated “Read Terminal” calls? I’m especially interested in how often they happen, like every few seconds or less often. That’ll help us figure out what exactly broke.

[khandar-william]

In the middle of the response, it looked like this, while the gradle test was running, the text “Read Terminal” keeps appearing

[Artemonim]

Agent guidance for long-running terminal commands