I propose a new layout for Agents in chats, Tabs layout.
Currently all chats are listed under your workspaces in sidebar.
By using tabs, we move those on top of the chat interface and we allow the sidebar with a breather.
The sidebar will be focused solely for the workspaces only, looks clean and chats are isolated.
Aside from organizational point of view, this also enables users to add terminal or browser as tabs, separately from per-chat that we already have.
Allows for decoupling of browser if you want a general browser that persists across your workspace. Same for terminal.
Benefits:
More organized UI, sidebar for workspaces and tabs for workspace-specific items such as chats, terminal and browser
Faster switching between workspaces in sidebar because there’s no overhead list of chats anymore
Allows for more chats in view; tabs are positioned horizontally on top compared to cramped altogether in sidebar
You can now add terminal and browser as tabs, so you can access those without being bounded on a specific chat
Nice to have suggestion on top:
grouped tabs per worktree
nested tabs for subagents
I have attached a screenshot which is a quick mockup of how tabs would look like on top of chat interface, quickly drafted in Figma in just minutes.
I can add more elements in the mockup if the team is interested.
Hi @keen Thanks for the idea and thank you for taking the time to produce the mock up showing the design!
I’ve shared this with the team internally and we appreciate you making a forum post because this also allows other community members to weigh in on the idea. Cheers!
Understood! We are tracking a class of issues with this… in the meantime… do you want to switch over to the New Agents View? (File → Switch to Agents View)? I believe the Agents View doesn’t have this issue… lmk how it goes!
Grouping chats and giving them name/color code is cool, been looking forward to this feature, just assuming not on top of priorities
subagent chats being nested or clearly identified and named/tagged/colored is cool and necessary. At the moment opening 10 subgagent chats is mess and you can’t really tell which is which, I usually just pop them side by side in the editor tab to be able to keep track.
Above apply to IDE view in Agent Layout, not a big fan of the Agents window myself.
No, absolutely not. I prefer the IDE view. The New Agents View feels like a copy of Codex and is not useful for my workflow. Please fix the issue in the IDE view instead.
This is a serious issue that needs to be fixed in the IDE view. When many chats and subagent sessions are open, tabs become difficult to identify and manage, which disrupts real development workflows.
Please add proper chat grouping, clear names, and visual labels such as colors or tags. Subagent chats should also be nested or clearly linked to their parent agent. Most importantly, fix the existing tab and layout problems instead of requiring users to switch to the New Agents View.
We are aware of the issue, but I don’t have an ETA for a fix. Please bear with us as we prioritize bugs by impact, severity, and whether there is a workaround available. Because there is a workaround available here, it might take us longer to resolve the bug. Thank you in advance for your patience.
With respect, the build out of the subagent Gui and the fixing of the associated bugs should be a very high priority as subagents are a core feature that makes using cursor attractive. Sub agent and orchestration features will be the make or break of my continued use of cursor if a competing product/IDE implements these features fully first.
Thanks for the update. Since there isn’t an ETA for the tabs fix, could you please share a quick status update on the other user-focused bugs the team is currently tracking?
Based on recent updates and discussions, here are the main user-facing issues I’m tracking:
Tabs in Agents Window: The current bug affecting window tabs breaking or misbehaving, which has a temporary workaround available.
Chat Visual Rendering Issues: A bug where long chats and multiple active tabs cause the virtualized transcript to cut off at the top or leave empty spaces above the input field. (Workaround: resizing the panel or running Developer: Reload Window).
MCP Server Windows Connectivity: External MCP servers failing to complete the internal handshake and connect properly on Windows machines.
Cursor-Agent-Worker Persistent Prompts: A cosmetic bug causing the built-in extension to get stuck showing infinite “Reload Window” or “Update” loops under LOCAL - INSTALLED setups. A full fix is expected to land in version 3.11.
Model Silently Switching to Auto: An issue where the model selector silently defaults back to “Auto” immediately after an agent finishes generating a plan in Plan Mode, even when a specific model like Grok 4.5 is manually selected.
Could you let me know if there are any updates or definitive timelines on these?
As a follow up on my previous comment, I noted that bugbot reviews do open in dedicated windows similar to my current workaround for tracking sub-agents (but automatically), ideally add to preferences that sub-agents can receive slug/tag to always open in a similar way, screenshot below as a good to know:
