Cursor Agent Not Working? Fix the Stuck or Reconnecting Session

Jump to: quick triage · stuck on "Reconnecting" · hangs on "Planning next move" · agent host bridge timeout / terminal goes quiet · agent mode or chat goes silent · Cursor itself won't open or respond · things worth clarifying

Start Here: Which Pattern Are You Seeing?

1. Open Help > About to note your exact Cursor version first. Several of the patterns below are version-specific - reported on one release, fixed or reintroduced in the next - and that's the first thing worth including if you end up asking for help.
2. Note exactly what's on screen - a status label like "Reconnecting" or "Planning next move," a complete silence with no error at all, or the whole app not responding. That's what the sections below split on.

Error 1 - Agent Stuck on "Reconnecting"

What you see: the Agent panel shows "Reconnecting" and never moves past it, for one model or for all of them, sometimes with Cursor's own Network Diagnostics reporting everything fine.

Why it happens

Cursor's own troubleshooting guide doesn't document this pattern by name - it's general, not agent-specific, and says nothing about "Reconnecting," HTTP/2, or Settings > Network. What's documented instead is a recurring, version-spanning pattern on Cursor's community forum: one user reports it resolved after updating to a later release, another reports it resolved after reverting to an earlier one, and a third reports it specifically for dev containers, with quitting and restarting Cursor as their only working fix. No two reports agree on a single cause, which is itself the clearest sign this is a version-dependent bug rather than something wrong in one person's setup.

How to fix it

1. Go to Settings > Network > HTTP Compatibility Mode and switch it to HTTP/1.1, then fully quit Cursor (not just close the window) and relaunch. This is the fix most repeated across forum reports, though a few users report it didn't help for them.
2. If it's one chat that's stuck, close that chat tab and start a new one rather than waiting - a forum thread on this exact pattern confirms a brand-new Agent window works normally while the existing session stays stuck.
3. If you're connected over Remote SSH, treat that as a separate case: one report traced it to a server-side change rather than anything local.
4. If none of this clears it, check Help > About for your version: forum reports describe both updating and reverting to a different release as having fixed this for other users, so trying the other direction is worth it before you reinstall anything. Use the checklist below if you report it instead.

What you should see: the agent responds normally in a new chat or window, without sitting on "Reconnecting" past the few seconds a normal network retry takes.

Error 2 - Agent Hangs on "Planning Next Move" or "Taking Longer Than Expected"

What you see: the agent starts a task, shows a "Planning next move" or similar in-progress status, and never moves past it - sometimes only on one network, not another.

Why it happens

A reply from Cursor on its own community forum ties a connection-level failure pattern (seen as a ConnectError: [unavailable]) to a VPN, an antivirus web-shield, or a custom DNS resolver - specifically, a DNS resolver pinned to one unreachable IP address produces exactly this pattern. Separately, the forum also records a stretch where "Planning next move" and "taking longer than expected" stalls were caused by a temporary slowdown on the model provider's side, later marked resolved - a reminder that not every stall is local or permanent.

How to fix it

1. Temporarily turn off any VPN, antivirus web-shield, or custom DNS, then re-run Cursor's built-in network diagnostics to see if the failure clears.
2. If it clears, the cause was one of those three - re-enable them one at a time to find out which, rather than leaving all of them off permanently.
3. If it doesn't clear, try switching models or starting a new chat - Cursor's own forum reply attributes some "taking longer than expected" stalls to temporary slowdowns on the model provider's side, not your network.
4. Open Help > Toggle Developer Tools, click the Console tab, and check for a specific network error before you escalate - it narrows down whether this is the same cause or something else entirely.

What you should see: the agent moves past "Planning next move" into an actual response within the normal time for the task.

Error 3 - "Agent Host Bridge" Timeout, or the Agent Terminal Goes Quiet

What you see: either the exact message "Timed out waiting for the agent host bridge to register," or a command the agent runs in its terminal that never reports back, even though it would complete fine if you ran it yourself.

Why it happens

A Cursor forum thread reporting the exact "agent host bridge" timeout points to View > Output, with "Cursor Agent Host" selected in the dropdown, as where the underlying registration error is actually logged. Separately, a terminal that hangs on specific commands without that exact message has been reported with one specific trigger: a January 2026 Apidog blog post describes the agent's terminal failing to detect that a command has finished when Powerlevel10k is used together with Oh-My-Zsh on macOS - commands that work fine in a manual terminal just sit there in an agent session. That's a single third-party report of one shell-theme combination, not a confirmed root cause for every quiet terminal.

How to fix it

For the exact "agent host bridge" timeout message, try these in order first:

1. Fully quit Cursor, confirm no Cursor process is left running in Task Manager (Windows) or Activity Monitor (macOS), then reopen it and send a short test message.
2. If that doesn't clear it, run Capture and Send Debugging Data from the command palette (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P). It saves a diagnostic bundle you can attach when you report the issue, which is more useful to whoever helps you than describing the error from memory.
3. On Windows, if Cursor is installed on a drive other than the system drive, try reinstalling it on the system drive (or ask IT to allow it to run from the other one) - this resolved the issue in at least one reported case.
4. A missing or broken Visual C++ runtime has also resolved this for at least one Windows user after repairing it.
5. Open View > Output and select Cursor Agent Host from the dropdown - this is where the actual registration error is logged, and it's worth including if you still need to ask for help after trying the above.

If instead your terminal just goes quiet on specific commands, without that exact timeout message:

1. If you're on macOS with a customized shell prompt - Powerlevel10k with Oh-My-Zsh is the specific combination reported - test whether the same commands complete normally under a minimal, default shell profile. That isolates whether your prompt theme is interfering with command-completion detection, without assuming it's the cause.
2. Collect the console error from Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console alongside the Agent Host output before asking for help; the generic timeout message alone isn't enough to diagnose.

What you should see: terminal commands the agent runs return their output and the agent continues, instead of waiting indefinitely.

Error 4 - Agent Mode or Chat Goes Silent, With No Error at All

What you see: you send a message in Agent Mode or chat and get nothing back - no "Reconnecting," no error, no response.

Why it happens

Cursor's troubleshooting guide doesn't list a cause specific to a silent agent - its documented approach for any unclear failure is to gather the same diagnostics regardless of symptom: a screenshot, your exact reproduction steps, and the console output, since a silent failure can originate at a point before any error would normally render.

How to fix it

1. Open Help > Toggle Developer Tools, click Console, and look for an error that didn't surface in the UI.
2. Start a brand-new Agent window rather than retrying in the same one - forum reports on the related "Reconnecting" pattern describe a fresh window working when an existing session wouldn't.
3. Fully quit Cursor (not just close the window) and relaunch, then retry the same request.
4. If it's still silent, search Cursor's community forum for reports from the same day before assuming it's local to your machine - a provider-side slowdown or outage shows up there fastest.

What you should see: the agent responds to the same request in a fresh window, or the console shows an error you can act on.

Error 5 - Cursor Itself Won't Open or Stops Responding

What you see: this isn't limited to the Agent panel - the whole Cursor window is frozen, slow to the point of being unusable, or won't launch at all.

Why it happens

Cursor's own troubleshooting guide treats this as app-level rather than agent-specific, and points first at resource use and extensions rather than anything about the agent or network.

How to fix it

1. Count your enabled extensions and disable the non-essential ones, then check whether the problem persists with a minimal extension set - the official guide lists this as a first step for high CPU or RAM use.
2. Run Developer: Open Process Explorer from the command palette (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P) and note what's using resources.
3. If escalating, share a screenshot from your system's own resource monitor too - Activity Monitor on macOS, Task Manager on Windows, or System Monitor on Linux.

What you should see: the app opens and responds at a normal speed once extensions are pared back or the resource hog is identified.

Things Worth Clarifying

• "Agent," Agent Mode, the agent terminal and the Cursor CLI's agent aren't separate products. They're different surfaces on the same underlying agent, which is why search terms like "agent cli not working" and "agent mode not working" turn up overlapping forum threads and the same fixes - a workaround reported for one surface (a fresh window, HTTP/1.1 compatibility mode) is worth trying on another even if the original report used a different one.
• The "Reconnecting" hang isn't in Cursor's own troubleshooting documentation. It's a widely repeated community forum report, not an officially documented known issue with a published fix list - reports disagree on the exact cause and even on whether updating or reverting your version fixes it, which is why this guide gives several things to try rather than one guaranteed setting.
• This guide covers Cursor's local IDE agent and its CLI, not Cursor's separate background/cloud agents. If your "agent" runs remotely rather than inside your open editor window, the connection-specific fixes here (HTTP compatibility mode, Remote SSH checks) may not apply the same way.

When It Isn't a Bug

• A hang caused by a VPN, antivirus web-shield, or custom DNS is a local network configuration issue, not a Cursor defect. Turning each off to confirm the cause, then deciding which to re-enable, is the actual fix - not something to wait on Cursor for.
• A single shell-theme combination breaking terminal detection is a narrow compatibility gap, not a sign Cursor itself is down. The Powerlevel10k/Oh-My-Zsh report is one specific, unverified-root-cause case - it doesn't mean every quiet terminal has the same cause.
• A version-specific bug isn't something local troubleshooting is guaranteed to fix. If HTTP/1.1 compatibility mode and a fresh window don't help with a stuck "Reconnecting," checking whether updating or reverting your Cursor version changes anything is worth more than repeating the same local steps.

What to Include When You Ask for Help

• a screenshot of exactly what's on screen, with anything sensitive blacked out;
• the exact steps that trigger it, and whether it's every time or intermittent;
• your Cursor version, from Help > About;
• whether you're on a VPN or a corporate proxy such as Zscaler;
• any error shown in Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console;
• on Windows, the contents of the logs folder (command palette: "Developer: Open Logs Folder"); on other platforms, the Terminal > Output panel;
• for a freeze or slowdown rather than a hang: a "Developer: Open Process Explorer" screenshot, plus one from your system's own resource monitor.

Related

If the agent keeps rewriting or reapplying the same edit instead of hanging or going silent, that's a different problem - see stopping Cursor's agent apply loops. If it's a specific MCP server that won't connect rather than the agent itself, see fixing Cursor MCP servers that won't connect. If the agent is only getting stuck while editing one particular file, see the "Gets Stuck on a File" section of the Cursor troubleshooting guide. For an overview of what Cursor covers as a platform, see the Cursor platform page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Checked on November 9, 2026:

• Cursor docs: Troubleshooting Guide
• Cursor forum: Cursor 3.20.21 stuck on "Reconnecting" for all models despite Network Diagnostics passing
• Cursor forum: Cursor 3.2.16 Agents Window gets stuck on "Reconnecting" after a few messages
• Cursor forum: Network issues - "stuck on planning next moves," "taking longer than expected"
• Cursor forum: Cursor IDE Agent not working – Agent Host Bridge timeout
• Apidog: Fixed - Cursor Agent Terminal Doesn't Work with Powerlevel10k & Oh-My-Zsh