Compliance is a MAJOR ISSUE - Permissions and Allow constantly ignored

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Hey, let’s break this down. There are two separate things here.

  1. mdc rules are not being followed

Rules are mixed into the prompt as guidance, not as a hard constraint. Whether they reliably make it into context depends on the rule type:

  • Always alwaysApply: true at the workspace root. The body is injected every turn.
  • Auto Attached globs: only when the agent reads a matching file.
  • Agent Requested only description:. The agent sees the description and decides whether to read the body.
  • Manual only via @ mention.

A common reason rules feel ignored is that they are not alwaysApply: true or they live in a nested folder so they are treated as file scoped. Check each rule type in Settings → Rules and move anything critical for compliance to Always at the repo root. More details: Rules | Cursor Docs

  1. The Allow List is being ignored

You are currently in Auto-review mode by default. In this mode, commands that can be sandboxed get sent to the sandbox and run without checking the allowlist, so it looks like the allowlist is not working. This is by design, see the discussion: Command Allowlist is silently ignored when "Auto-Run in Sandbox" is enabled

Another detail: the shell allowlist is only read from the global ~/.cursor/permissions.json. The project .cursor/permissions.json is not used for command gating right now. This is a known limitation and has been reported, there is no ETA yet. That is why it feels like changing things in the project root does nothing.

For strict per command control:

  • Switch Run Mode to Allowlist in the same picker where Auto-review is now. Then the sandbox won’t intercept commands and the allowlist will actually apply.
  • Or enable Legacy Terminal Tool in Settings → Agents → Inline Editing & Terminal. This brings back the classic allowlist control on the host.
  1. About enforcement and support

On personal Pro you do not get admin enforced rules or a locked auto-run policy. That is only on Team or Enterprise. If you need to centrally enforce rules and permissions for compliance across a team, you need Team, Business, or Enterprise. Those plans also include dedicated support channels.

If after moving rules to Always and switching to Allowlist it still does not follow them, share the Request ID menu in the top right of the chat > Copy Request ID, your run mode, and the frontmatter from one of the rules, and we can dig deeper.