Commands Not Running in Cursor

While revisiting my terminal setup, I ran into an issue where commands wouldn't run in Cursor, so I’m recording the cause and fix.

##Symptoms

The Cursor terminal opens and displays normally, but when the AI agent tries to execute a command, nothing runs and it hangs.

##Cause

The issue appeared after switching the prompt from starship to powerlevel10k. I haven't confirmed it, but Zellij might also be involved.

There is also a topic about this on the Cursor forum.

• Cursor Agent Terminal Doesn’t Work Well with Powerlevel10k + Oh-My-Zsh - Bug Reports - Cursor - Community Forum

##Solution

The Cursor topic lists several approaches. Here is the configuration that works in my environment at the moment.

It might include unnecessary settings; I haven't fully verified.

Since the cause seems to be powerlevel10k being enabled, I make sure powerlevel10k is not loaded when the Cursor AI agent runs commands by adding the following to my zsh config.

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POWERLEVEL9K_DISABLE_CONFIGURATION_WIZARD=true
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if [[ -n $CURSOR_TRACE_ID ]]; then
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  ZSH_THEME=""
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else
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  ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"
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fi
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if [[ -n $CURSOR_TRACE_ID ]]; then
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  PROMPT='%n@%m:%~%# '
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  RPROMPT=""
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else
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  [[ -f ~/.p10k.zsh ]] && source ~/.p10k.zsh
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  source ${pkgs.zsh-powerlevel10k}/share/zsh-powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme
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fi

I use the CURSOR_TRACE_ID environment variable to detect whether the command is being run by Cursor's AI agent.

${pkgs.zsh-powerlevel10k} points to the package path because I manage my config with Nix, but you should adjust this to your environment.