excerpt: “## Background”

Background

Recent updates to Cursor (built on VSCode) introduced subtle but devastating environment variable mutations inside integrated terminals. For users relying on Conda environments or complex multi-shell setups, these changes didn’t just introduce minor inconveniences — they rendered entire workflows inoperable.

This post walks through how my Conda environment became impossible to activate within Cursor’s integrated terminal, despite working perfectly fine in external shells like iTerm2. Through careful inspection, debugging, and deep dives into VSCode’s hidden shell integration mechanisms, I was able to reverse-engineer the problem and craft a solution.

If you’re encountering strange issues with Conda activation, broken PS1 prompts, or inconsistent environment inheritance inside Cursor/VSCode, this guide may save you hours of frustration.

excerpt: “## Background”