Terminal/Editor is unusable when agent is working

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Unable to type or browse around the terminal or editor when the agent is doing something

Steps to Reproduce

Open a project, open some files, open a terminal. ask the agent to do something. Attempt to do anything in the terminal, or open a file to review changes while the agent is working.

Expected Behavior

Be able to do unrelated work, steps, verify progress while the agent is working, I have 48cores on my machine, why must everything run single threaded?

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

Version: 3.5.33
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: aac81804b986d739acab348ed96b8bea6e83cc50
Date: 2026-05-22T06:47:48.039Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 7.0.5-zabbly+

Additional Information

cursor works, but I dont, I am unable to do any work if cursor is doing something.
Tried searching for a related bug, but the forums search is very limited and was not finding anything.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue. The UI, editor and terminal can freeze while the agent is actively working, especially in long or heavy sessions. The root cause is that part of the work is limited by Cursor’s renderer thread, so having more CPU cores unfortunately doesn’t directly help. The issue is tracked and being investigated, but I can’t share an exact ETA for a fix yet.

What can help right now:

  • Run heavy or long commands in a separate terminal outside Cursor, or in a second window. That way the main window stays responsive.
  • If you use very long chats or sessions, start a new chat for separate tasks. The accumulated renderer state can noticeably hurt responsiveness.
  • If you’re hitting freezes or OOM on long runs, restarting the window between big tasks can help.

I’ll link your report to the issue we’re already tracking. If there’s an update on the fix, I’ll reply in the thread.