Sticky prompt header in the chat pane covers the first lines of the agent's response

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

While an agent is working, the chat pane pins my most recent prompt in an overlay at the top of the conversation. The overlay is painted on top of the scrolling conversation instead of reserving its own space, so it hides the first one to three lines of the agent’s response. With a prompt long enough to wrap to four lines, the agent’s entire opening sentence is unreadable, and I have to scroll the conversation to see text that should already be visible. The taller the prompt, the more of the response it covers.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open the Agents window on macOS (my chat pane is roughly 1470x924 points).
  2. Send a prompt long enough to wrap to three or four lines.
  3. Watch the agent’s reply stream in.
  4. The first lines of the reply render underneath the pinned prompt overlay and cannot be read without scrolling the conversation.

Expected Behavior

The pinned prompt should either reserve vertical space in the scroll container so content begins below it, collapse to a single line, or be dismissible. No content should be permanently hidden behind it.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

cursor-chat-overlay-bug.png
cursor-chat-overlay-bug.png2940×1912 345 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.20.17 (Universal)
VS Code Extension API: 1.128.0
Commit: 0c32194e3fb5ffaced9fb36430b860ec301e1fc0
Date: 2026-09-12T03:16:10.634Z
Layout: Agent Window
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 42.10.0
Chromium: 148.0.7778.280
Node.js: 24.18.1
V8: 14.8.178.38-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.291
OS: Darwin arm64 25.5.0

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Claude Opus 5 High

Additional Information

Reproduces regardless of cursor.composer.conversationDensity (I use compact-ungrouped).

There appears to be no setting that disables, collapses, or resizes the overlay: no cursor.chat.* or sticky-header keys exist in 3.20.17, and upstream VS Code’s experimental sessions.promptTimeline.stickyHeader is not present in the Cursor build, so adding it to settings.json has no effect.

Lowering window.zoomLevel shrinks the entire UI, which sidesteps the overlap rather than fixing it.

This looks like the same class of issue as Plan modal in the right sidebar is sticky; causing it to hide other messages, which was treated as a bug: a sticky element inside the chat scroll container obscuring content beneath it.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey, thanks for the detailed report and the screenshot. I can see how the pinned prompt is covering the first line of the agent’s reply.

Pinning the latest message at the top is intentional so your request stays visible while the agent is working, but it shouldn’t cover the start of the reply if you haven’t scrolled. We’ll take a look at that part, and I’ve shared the screenshot with the team.

To narrow down the cause, a couple quick checks in the same chat would help:

  1. Scroll up by a line or two. Does the hidden first line of the reply appear, or does the pinned prompt stay on top of it?
  2. Press Cmd+B twice to close and reopen the sidebar. Does the overlap go away?
  3. Switch to another chat and then back. Does the first line of the reply show correctly?

A short screen recording of these steps would be ideal. It’ll make it clear what’s breaking, whether it’s the layout under the pinned prompt or the pinning behavior itself.

For now, as a workaround, a small scroll up brings the hidden text back into view. Let me know what you see for steps 1 to 3.