Composer UX: `Tactical Rules` and Mermaid preview in chat

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature Requests

Suggestions for improving UX that don’t require too much implementation effort. I have been using Cursor inactively for a year and a half, and actively for three months, and every day, damn it, I REALLY need these features.

1. Tactical Rules

Idea: Add Tactical Rules - a set of custom instructions added to the end of the prompt, which the user selects when sending a message in Composer.

Usage:

  • (Enter): Send <user_query>

  • (Alt + q + Enter): Send <user_query> + Tactical Rules (at the end of the prompt will be added: “Provide an answer that is 1 paragraph long.”)

  • (Alt + w + Enter): Send <user_query> + Tactical Rules (at the end of the prompt will be added: “Provide an answer in ```mermaid``` format.”)

  • (Alt + e + Enter): Send <user_query> + Tactical Rules (at the end of the prompt will be added: “Suggest 3 alternative solutions.”)

Description:

  • Tactical Rules is a new tactical type of custom Rules, complementing Project Rules and Global Rules. There can be multiple Tactical Rules, similar to Project Rules.

  • Each Tactical Rule can be assigned a unique key combination or UI element, available before sending a message in Composer.

  • To send a message with a Tactical Rule, use TacticalRulesKey + Enter (instead of just Enter). This adds the corresponding Tactical Rule to the end of the prompt, allowing you to tactically change the response format instructions during the conversation, and also eliminating the problem of “needle in the middle of the prompt”.

Demonstration:

  1. Press: Enter → Result: Send the query and get a response.

  2. Press: Alt (Option) + q + Enter → Result: Send the query with the added instruction “Provide an answer that is 1 paragraph long” and get a response in 1 paragraph.

2. Mermaid preview in chat tab

Idea: Preview of Mermaid diagrams in the chat tab. Activation: through Features settings or directly in mermaid block in the chat tab.

Description:

  • Instead of mermaid code, a ready-made diagram is displayed directly in the chat tab, which reduces cognitive load and improves perception.

  • It can be simply for mermaid, or go further and ask LLM to use mermaidcursor specifically for explanations.

  • This is very useful for quickly understanding the meaning, instead of reading a long text response.

  • It’s much more convenient for quickly reading a mermaid diagram, instead of writing to a file, using external tools, or drawing in your imagination.

  • LLMs understand and write well in Mermaid and Graphviz formats.