No project rules found

Bug Reports
1

I have a few rules set in .cursor\rules but it seems that cursor can’t see them. Some of those rules were created manually while the others were created using the “Add new rule” button in cursor settings → General

In the Project Rules section is hows “No project rules found. Click the + button to add a new rule” even after adding a rule

I asked composer if it can see the rules. Please check the response in the attached image

cursor-project-rules-2
cursor-project-rules-21390×1454 266 KB

Running cursor:
Version: 0.45.9
VSCode Version: 1.96.2
Commit: cce0110ca40ceb61e76ecea08d24210123895320
Date: 2025-02-02T06:44:49.761Z
Electron: 32.2.6
Chromium: 128.0.6613.186
Node.js: 20.18.1
V8: 12.8.374.38-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045

2

Update:
When creating a new rule and then closing the opened rule file in the editor, it will prompt to save the file. Only then it will list the rule under Project Rules
It will only prompt you as long as you haven’t closed the cursor IDE. When reopening the IDE and closing the rule file, it will not ask to save it unless you make some edits to the file.

3

Same issue. /.cursor/rules/something.mdc isn’t detected. /.cursorrules isn’t detected. Using the File: New Cursor Rule command and typing the name of an existing .mdc rule file just wipes that file and replaces it with the semi-empty Cursor template. No matter what, none of these are showing up in Cursor Settings, and trying to reference them in Chat doesn’t seem to do anything.

This is on version 0.45.10.

I even started a new Cursor IDE session, opened an empty folder, saved an empty .py file in it to simulate an empty new project, used the File: New Cursor Rule function, saved the .mdc file, and still nothing in Cursor Settings.

2 Likes
4

Hmmm, I got it to work by filling out the Description field in the MDC editor. The UI doesn’t make it clear that Description is obligatory.

1 Like
5

This is what worked for me as well (filling out description field in MDC editor). And had to close and reopen Cursor, then it showed up.

6

Adding descriptions and explicitly saving allows the rule files to show up in settings. However, they do not seem to be applied.

As a test rule: “Start each of your responses with: Yest, sir.” which does not happen, until I reference the rule file directly:

image
image1590×1125 104 KB

1 Like
7

We’re having the same issue in our team:

  1. We use the Cursor Settings UI to add a new project rule.

    image
    image943×184 11.1 KB

  2. Include our ruleset/instructions (add something like start each response with a ‘Bang’)

It doesn’t work (tried restarting the Cursor IDE). It has no context of the files unless explicitly specified with the @rules command.

It only seems to work if the soon to be deprecated .cursorrules file has been provided with the relevant instructions and not with .cursor/rules.

8

To get my rules to appear in settings, I had to open the .mdc file with Cursor, then change from “Manual” to “Always” in the picklist at the top (so that the rules are always considered)