Best Practices: .cursorrules

How To
21

Confimed info?

22

I added instructions to the .cursorrules file, including the project name and the guidance to “Begin each response with the project name.” In both Chat and Composer modes, it correctly outputs the project’s name. So, the instruction file seems intended to work with Composer.

23

Oh, is that why the AI keeps creating duplicative .cursorrule files in my root? I have them in src\rules currently. I also have 3 rules files and have them named in front of the dot. I use one just for rules: rules.cursorrules, one to try to enforce file structure: structure.cursorrules, and one as a todo/ticketing system: implement.cursorrules. It seems to be working pretty well, especially the implement file, but the structure file hasn’t prevented it from duplicating files across the file system.

25

the file is called .cursorrules

it is not a suggestion for the file extension

so rules.cursorrules will not be considered

files starting with a dot (.) in unix are not shown in file listings by default

26

can you share me with the contents of your .cursorrules ?

27

For the project where I was testing whether composer was reading the .cursorrules file, I had something like this:

{
  "rules": {
    "context_initialization": {
      "description": "Starting point for each interaction",
      //...
      "output": "Begin each response with the project name."
    },
    //  ...
    "project_directives": {
      "name": "my-project-name-here"
      // ...
    }
  }
}