Hey, good request. A few things overlap here, so I’ll go step by step.
About .cursorrules in projects
Agents Window uses a different approach for working directories. For project rules .cursorrules or .cursor/rules/ to be picked up, you first need to open the right project as a workspace in Agents Window. Without that, the agent runs from the home directory and won’t see project rules. That’s expected behavior.
About ~/.cursor/rules/ in the home directory
This is a known issue with Glass (Agents Window). There’s a confirmed bug where file-backed rules from ~/.cursor/rules/ don’t show up in the Settings UI in Agents Window. They’re supposed to be loaded by the agent at runtime, but there are reports that it doesn’t always work correctly. Related thread: Cursor settings don’t list or reflect active user rules and plugins
The team is aware of it. There’s no timeline yet, but reports help with prioritization.
Current workarounds
- User Rules via the UI: Cursor Settings > Rules > add the rule text. These cloud-synced rules work reliably in both Agents Window and the Editor. Not ideal if you prefer a file-based workflow, but it works.
- Project-scoped rules: make sure a specific project is opened as a workspace in Agents Window, then
.cursor/rules/from that project should be picked up. - @ mentions: in chat you can manually attach a rule via
@if needed.
A couple questions to help narrow it down
- What Cursor version and OS are you on?
- When you say the agent says it can’t see the rules, is that the model’s answer to your request, or do you see missing rules in the agent’s actual behavior?
- Do your
.mdcfiles include frontmatter withalwaysApply: true?
Let me know how it goes.