Run_terminal_cmd hangs forever after calling WSL shell even when shell completes instantly

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

the agent runs a command like “ls” in my shell (WSL with legacy console turned ON since otherwise I get powershell due to a bug that cursor can’t fix).

The ls completes instantly, but the agent spins forever waiting for the command to complete. If you hit cancel, the Agent never gets the console output.

This is extremely frustrating and easily my #1 biggest cursor annoyance and this has been happening since I started using cursor 6 months ago.

It appears the workaround is to turn off legacy teminal tool, so that each command must be prefaced with wsl.exe since it is impossible to tell cursor to use wsl directly even with the proper configs. Is that right?

Steps to Reproduce

Windows. Set your interactive shell to WSL. have the agent do any simple command like ls -l. Most of the time (not always) it will spin forever even though the command completes instantly.

Expected Behavior

When the command completes, it should notify Cursor the results of the output.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.34 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 643ba67cd252e2888e296dd0cf34a0c5d7625b90
Date: 2026-01-10T21:17:10.428Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

For AI issues: which model did you use?

chatgpt 4.2

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

4

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

My working environment is windows+wsl(ubuntu)+cursor. My dev working space is in WSL and I started cursor with “cursor .” in the project home folder. Recently I updated cursor extensions (WSL/Remote/Dev Container from anysphere) as required. and then cursor agent hangs very frequently when it was running command like “tail -f 20” or “ls” etc. I believe it did not happen once with old extensions from vscode. It is very very annoying. help please…

Steps to Reproduce

it just comes without any special ops…

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

screenshot-20260111-164937.png
screenshot-20260111-164937.png1653×744 92.9 KB

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.34 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 643ba67cd252e2888e296dd0cf34a0c5d7625b90
Date: 2026-01-10T21:17:10.428Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

8

Hey! This is a known issue with the WSL terminal, and the team is aware.

For now, you can try a few workarounds:

  1. Disable the legacy terminal tool (like you mentioned) and use the wsl.exe prefix for commands
  2. Check your terminal profile: Settings > search for terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows and try setting WSL explicitly
  3. Test without extensions: run cursor --disable-extensions and see if the issue still happens

@AfoZhang, which exact extensions did you update? Can you try rolling back the Remote-SSH and WSL extensions and check again?

Also, can you share what’s in Output > Terminal? (View > Output > select “Terminal” from the dropdown)

10

Good to know I found the best workaround which is to disable the legacy terminal tool which forces powershell and tell cursor to prefix commands with wsl.exe