Summarizing Context Resets context in chat

When using sonnet 3.7 max (which isn’t cheap) cursor attempts to summarize (I assume when it hits a context limit or some other trigger with embeddings). Well when it summarizes and suggests a new chat, most of the time then resets the context so the LLM forgets what I was doing. This is making it so that Cursor increases the work I have to do re-explaining and adding the context back. If this is a dark pattern, it is beyond insidious and if it isn’t then it is a bug that should have been fixed already.
I’m on Cursor 48.7

4 Likes

seriously. the summary message hidden among the context files is such a lazy move on cursor’s part. instead, it should literally prompt the next session with a recommended user message to initiate the chat.

1 Like

Or they could offer the option to do this, but not force it. I haven’t found a way to disable the summarization. I don’t want it, I don’t need it, and it screws up my workflow, so why force it on me?


for me it is just wasting time and doing nothing, at the moment keeps sumarizing and sumarizing, while doing nothing, and this is an almost new chat, with 3 or 4 requests
literally, I have to stop it a lot, as it get in a loop

example of the last one:
[MODE: RESEARCH]

I’ll start by researching the current structure and implementation to understand the components better.

Read file: src/components/ui/IA/tabs/NotesTab.tsx

I’ll help you implement these modifications to your UI components.

Ran tool

I’ll help you implement the requested changes to your application. Let me start by investigating the current codebase structure to get a better understanding of what we’re working with.

Ran tool

[MODE: RESEARCH]

Let me explore the codebase to understand the current structure of the NotesTab component and related files.

Ran tool

I’ll help you implement these changes. Let me start by examining the current code structure.

Search files…

[MODE: RESEARCH]

Let me investigate the codebase structure and understand the components that need to be modified.

Ran tool

[MODE: RESEARCH]

Let me investigate the current codebase structure to understand the components we need to modify.

Ran tool

[MODE: RESEARCH]

I’ll look into the codebase to understand the structure and current implementation of the requested components.

Ran tool

[MODE: RESEARCH]

Let me search for the files I need to work with to implement the requested improvements.

Search files…

I’ll help you implement the requested UI improvements. Let me analyze the current code structure first.

Ran tool

I’ll help you implement the requested UI improvements.

Read file: /src/components/ui/IA/tabs/NotesTab.tsx

[MODE: RESEARCH]

Let me explore the codebase to understand the structure of the components we need to modify.

Ran tool

[MODE: RESEARCH]

Let me start by exploring the relevant components in your application to understand the current structure and implementation.

Search files…

I’ll help you implement these UI improvements.

This has also happened to me. It even happens with the summarization problem I mentioned!

It definitely seems to be being developed under the philosophy of move fast and break things. I just wish there was less breaking and that the releases were tested a bit more before being pushed to non-Beta users


I love when stuff like this happen lately, like JUST move a file, it can’t.

literally I told it move a file, nope, it has to create a new one and modify it

now, I understand what happened to me, I was wondering why after 4 messages I was recommended to start new chat. and composer was loosing context all the time.
I switched to roo code and used gemini 2.5 pro, it worked very nicely

I don’t get why they don’t fix this or offer the option to disable it

Cursor’s broken, we can’t work anymore. It does this to me all the time!
We’ve got to solve this problem.

It’s happened 5 times today to me.

2 Likes

It’s my understanding that the same thing happens when there’s a network issue and we press the button to try again. Cursor just goes crazy and hallucinates its own instructions instead of strictly following the ones from the context.

Yet another day of disappointment, honestly.

1 Like

It is definitely a similar experience, although I have only had that happen 2-3 times total, vs. 5+ times every day. :frowning:

1 Like

This has happened to me repeatedly all day. And it gets stuck in a loop calling my mcp tools over and over.

Hey! Just wanted to shine some light on this situation

When Cursor hit context window limits it starts to summarize the conversation in order to preserve the context and semantics of a conversation and not having those tokens rolling off. This is something that we’ve always done and we’re actively working on improving this.

Recently we had a bug where summarization got triggered a bit too often, causing more context to be lost. We’re working on this right now and while we’re fixing we’ve temporarily enabled the previous version of summarization without this specific bug. Should be out EOW, and then you should be seeing less of this issue!

Hope that clarifies some things

3 Likes

Hope to enable the full-link reasoning process

Thank you for the response and yes, this has already improved things for me dramatically

it’s so nice to read from you guys! it’s working better now