Nested Cursor Rules (Subdirectories)

Discussions
1

I think I’d like discuss and seek clarification on Nested Rules here.

According to Cursor – Rules:

Nested rules are:

  • Automatically attached when files in their directory are referenced

My question:

  • Should not above “Automatically attached” behavior be controlled by a Cursor Rule’s globs or alwaysApply metadata?

To be more specific:
Let’s use the official doc’s example:

project/
  .cursor/rules/        # Project-wide rules
  backend/
    server/
      .cursor/rules/    # Backend-specific rules
  frontend/
    .cursor/rules/      # Frontend-specific rules

For above codebase structure, how will be the # Backend-specific rules be used by Cursor Agent?

  1. Will these rules always be included in the context whenever I refer to any files under the backend/server/ directory? — NO MATTER how I write the metadata section (description, globs, alwaysApply)?
  2. Or the “metadata section” still has control over nested rules? If so, how?