We use a symlink trick in our monorepo to share certain rules between the root and the sub-packages.
We have a postinstall script that symlinks the root .cursor folder into each package, allowing our developers to work either from the root or within a sub-package independently (without requiring the root to be in scope).
This technique currently works, and it seems you’ve implemented (please confirm) a system that prevents duplication of all symlinked rules when working from the root. I believe you remove strictly identical rules from the context?
However, this is more of a workaround. It would be great to have proper built-in support, something inspired by Node.js module resolution—where Cursor would navigate up the folder hierarchy, picking up rules until none are found.
Steps to Reproduce
Create a monorepo and define rules at the root. Then, open a sub-package in a new window (without the root in scope) the Cursor IDE doesn’t detect any of the defined rules.
Expected Behavior
Cursor should navigate upward through the folder structure until no rules are found, so developers only need to define rules once and can avoid using symlink tricks.
Operating System
MacOS
Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)
hi @Moumouls and thank you for the detailed bug report.
Cursor currently detects and applies rules in a top-down manner within the project folder hierarchy you open in the IDE. It looks for .cursor/rules folders starting at the project root and down into subdirectories, but it does not traverse upwards to parent directories outside that project root.
Built-in support for upward traversal and merging of rules from parent folders outside the current project root is not part of the current feature set, this would be a good feature request.
And any special handling on symlinks ?
I think it could be an easy fix on your side to prevent duplicate rules in the context with strict match content. It could save a huge amount of tokens