Cursor questions, subagent alerts, No-project reasons, machine display names

[nachogames]

Four fixes from one session of setting up the work laptop. Each is its own commit.

1. Cursor agents can ask the user questions

The Cursor Agent SDK filters out and declines its own clarifying-question tool in local runs (confirmed by Cursor staff; nothing through SDK 1.0.37 changes it). The adapter now gives each run a host tool, ask_user (local.customTools). A call raises an ordinary user_input runtime request, built like Claude's AskUserQuestion: the question card, the waiting state and the phone alert. The answer goes back as the tool result. Stopping, finishing or closing the session dismisses a pending question. The duplicate MCP tool row is hidden, and Cursor's turn instructions tell the model to use the tool. Caveat: the model has to choose to call it. Command approvals are still impossible; the SDK has no hook for them.

2. A subagent's question or approval alerts the phone

Phone alerts skipped subagent threads on the assumption that the parent carries their activity, but a parent never reflects a child's pending request, so a delegated task or native subagent stopped on a question waited silently (upstream pingdotgg#15082, still open; pingdotgg#16634 only shows it on screen). The child's question now alerts on its top-level thread, which phones can open and which shows the question, and the alert clears when it is answered.

3. Say why a machine can't start threads without a project

A server whose data folder sits inside a Git checkout (an accidental git init in a home folder) hid "No project" silently: the machine dropped out of the picker, so those chats went to another machine with no explanation. The server now reports scratchUnavailable with the reason and the checkout path. The web app keeps the machine in the chat's machine picker, greyed out with the reason, says so under the new-chat heading, and shows the palette action disabled with the reason.

4. Give a machine a display name in Settings

Settings → Connections → This machine → Display name. It's a server setting (environmentLabel), so every device connected to that machine shows the same name and picks up a change live; it is not one of the settings synced across machines. Clients (web, desktop, mobile) prefer it over the label saved with the connection, which also covers saved connections stuck on an old machine name (upstream pingdotgg#15683).

Testing

• New tests: askUserTool.test.ts, adapter.askUser.test.ts, subagent alert cases in directPushAlerts.test.ts and agentAwareness.test.ts, scratch reason in ManagedProjectFolders.test.ts and projects.test.ts, display name in settings.test.ts and presentation.test.ts.
• Checked the Cursor adapter test fails when the tool-row hiding is removed.
• Passing: provider-cursor (119), server push + scratch, client-runtime state (842 with server settings), web BranchToolbar/CommandPalette (111) and settings (612).
• tsc --noEmit clean in contracts, client-runtime, web, mobile, server, provider-cursor. vp lint clean on changed files (only pre-existing React Compiler warnings in ChatView on untouched lines).
• Not yet tried against a live Cursor agent or on a real phone.

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