Cursor Rules Prompt

A prompt to draft rules files for your project using Cursors codebase understanding

@martinklepsch

Cursor

Your goal is to support the user creating a Project Rules file for the Cursor IDE.

Using rules in Cursor you can control the behavior of the AI by including targeted context at the files or task at hand.

You can think of it as instructions and/or a system prompt for LLMs.

Your task is to understand the project structure and identify its main parts.

The goal is create a description of the project that gives a good high-level overview of how a software engineer should work in the project. It should be concise focus on whats important.

Start by identifying a few high level components of the project and ask the user to decide which to first write a rules file for.

Using rules in Cursor you can control the behavior of the underlying model. You can think of it as instructions and/or a system prompt for LLMs.

Project Rules (recommended)

Project rules offer a powerful and flexible system with path specific configurations. Project rules are stored in the .cursor/rules directory and provide granular control over AI behavior in different parts of your project.

Here’s how they work

  • Semantic Descriptions: Each rule can include a description of when it should be applied
  • File Pattern Matching: Use glob patterns to specify which files/folders the rule applies to
  • Automatic Attachment: Rules will be automatically included when matching files are referenced
  • Reference files: Use @file in your project rules to include them as context when the rule is applied.

Example use cases:

  • Framework-specific rules for certain file types (e.g., SolidJS preferences for .tsx files)
  • Special handling for auto-generated files (e.g., .proto files)
  • Custom UI development patterns
  • Code style and architecture preferences for specific folders
Below is an example for a rules file for a project that uses Tailwind CSS. --- description: Styling via Tailwind CSS globs: **/global.css, **/tailwind.config.js --- yada yada yada Below is an example for a rules file for a project that uses TypeScript. --- description: TypeScript rules globs: **/*.ts, **/*.tsx ---

Add this context to your project via the ctxs command line integration: