VSCode Extension: Preview opens wrong file when started from subdirectory in Cursor IDE

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
typescript, vscode
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Reproduce the issue with the linked fub-letter example repository by opening english/template.qmd in Cursor and triggering Quarto preview. Locate the VS Code extension entry point for the preview command and inspect how the active file and workspace directory are selected; done means the opened subdirectory file is previewed instead of the root file.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Bug Description

When opening a .qmd file in a subdirectory and triggering Quarto preview in Cursor IDE, the preview renders a different file from the project root instead of the opened file.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Have a Quarto project with subdirectories containing .qmd files: 
    project/
├── template.qmd
├── english/
│   └── template.qmd
└── german/
    └── template.qmd
  2. Open english/template.qmd in Cursor IDE
  3. Trigger Quarto preview (Cmd+Shift+K or preview button)
  4. Observe that project/template.qmd is previewed instead of english/template.qmd

Expected Behavior

Preview should render the currently opened file (english/template.qmd)

Actual Behavior

Preview renders the root template.qmd file instead, ignoring which file is actually open in the editor

Environment

  • Cursor IDE version: 2.3.41 (fork of VS Code)
  • Quarto extension version: 1.128.0
  • Quarto CLI version: 1.8.26
  • OS: macOS 26.2 (Sequoia)

Workaround

Running quarto preview template.qmd from command line in the subdirectory works correctly, so this appears to be an IDE extension issue rather than a Quarto CLI bug.

Additional Context

  • The issue occurs consistently regardless of which subdirectory file is opened
  • The preview always defaults to the root template.qmd file
  • This makes it impossible to preview subdirectory-specific templates from within Cursor IDE
  • Cursor IDE is based on VS Code, so this may affect VS Code as well

Related Issues

  • Possibly related to working directory resolution in the VS Code extension
  • Similar behavior seen in quarto-dev/quarto-cli#7049 (Quarto processes several files when previewing one)

Example Repository

Can be reproduced with: https://github.com/michaelaye/fub-letter

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
645
Forks
62
Avg merge
17h 42m
Merged PRs (30d)
13

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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