Cursor Rules: Opinionated Preset for Enhanced Workflows

A carefully crafted collection of rules that optimize your Cursor AI experience. These rules enforce consistent practices, improve AI assistance quality, and streamline common development workflows.

Note: This is an opinionated preset designed to enhance productivity. Feel free to adapt these rules to your personal preferences! ✨

🚀 Quick Start

The apply-rules.sh script allows you to download rules directly to your project without cloning the entire repository:

# Download the script
curl -o apply-rules.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitas/cursor-rules/master/apply-rules.sh && chmod +x apply-rules.sh

# Basic usage - download all rules to target directory
./apply-rules.sh /path/to/your/project

# Overwrite existing rules
./apply-rules.sh --ow /path/to/your/project

# Filter rules by pattern (e.g., only download UV-related rules)
./apply-rules.sh --filter "uv*" /path/to/your/project

# Filter multiple rule types (e.g., UV and Python rules)
./apply-rules.sh --filter "uv*|python*" /path/to/your/project

Parameters:

--ow: Optional flag to overwrite existing rules
--filter PATTERN: Optional regex pattern to filter which rules to download
<target_directory>: Required path where rules will be downloaded

After running the script:

Reindex the project, so new rules are applied.
Enjoy enhanced AI interactions!

✨ Features

Structured Organization - Logically organized rules by domain and purpose
Improved AI Responses - Guidelines for more helpful and consistent AI assistance
Development Workflows - Optimized patterns for git, directory management, and more
Language-Specific Rules - Specialized rules for Markdown and other languages
Customizable Framework - Easily extend with your own rules

📁 Rules Organization

All rules are now stored directly in the .cursor/rules/ directory using a flat structure for simplicity and ease of management.

Available Rules

Core Rules

clean-code.mdc - Code Quality Guidelines
coding-principles.mdc - Code Quality Principles
cursor-rules.mdc - Cursor Rules Format
emoji-usage.mdc - Emoji Usage Guidelines
gitflow.mdc - Gitflow Workflow Rules

Tools Rules

commit-message.mdc - Semantic Commit Messages
directory-listing.mdc - Directory Listing Guidelines
git.mdc - Git Command Usage

Language-Specific Rules

cpp.mdc - C++ Programming Guidelines
tailwind.mdc - Tailwind CSS Best Practices
golang.mdc - Go (Golang) Coding Standards
golang-project-structure.mdc - Go Project Structure Best Practices
formatting.mdc - Markdown Formatting Standards
node-express.mdc - Node.js and Express.js Best Practices
php.mdc - PHP Coding Standards and Best Practices
php-7.4.mdc - PHP 7.4 Features and Best Practices
php-8.0.mdc - PHP 8.0 Features and Best Practices
php-8.1.mdc - PHP 8.1 Features and Best Practices
php-8.2.mdc - PHP 8.2 Features and Best Practices
php-8.3.mdc - PHP 8.3 Features and Best Practices
phpunit-test.mdc - PHPUnit Testing Best Practices
fastapi.mdc - FastAPI Best Practices
python.mdc - Python Best Practices
nextjs.mdc - Next.js Best Practices
react.mdc - React Best Practices
database.mdc - Database Best Practices
svelte.mdc - Svelte Best Practices
typescript.mdc - TypeScript Best Practices
uv-tool-usage.mdc - UV Python Package Manager Best Practices
vue.mdc - Vue.js Best Practices

⚙️ Configuration

Editor Settings

For optimal experience with .mdc files and to avoid flaky behavior of Cursor's MDC editor:

{
  "files.associations": {
    "*.mdc": "markdown"
  },
  "workbench.editorAssociations": {
    "*.mdc": "default"
  }
}

This configuration sets the default text editor for .mdc files and enables markdown syntax highlighting.

`.cursorindexignore` Setup

During active development of your rules:

# Add to .cursorindexignore
.cursor/rules/*

This prevents rules from being embedded in the index while they're changing rapidly. After finalizing your rules, remove this entry and manually rebuild the index for better rule accessibility.

🔧 Working with Rules

Creating New Rules

Just ask agent to create new rule, outlining desired properties and application plain.
Review and work on the rule with agent.
Save and commit.

Rule Synchronization

When creating or deleting rules:

Update the RULES array in the apply-rules.sh script to keep it synchronized
Maintain alphabetical order in the array for easy management
Commit both the rule changes and script updates together

After Rules Update

For Cursor to apply updated or newly created rules:

Restart the context so rules can be re-indexed, or
Explicitly specify the updated rule files for Cursor to reindex them

🧠 Advanced Usage

Self-Questioning Reasoning Framework

The .ai/meta-prompt-example.md file provides a sample "User rule" that implements a self-questioning reasoning framework. This approach enhances the AI's problem-solving capabilities through structured internal dialogue.

Important: This approach is optimized for Cursor and not recommended for other AI platforms that may bill differently based on output token usage. The self-questioning framework generates substantial output tokens which could result in higher costs on platforms with different billing models.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have ideas for new rules or improvements to existing ones, please:

Fork the repository
Create your feature branch
Submit a pull request

mitas/cursor-rules