After installing a team-built custom plugin via Cursor’s plugin system, rules defined with alwaysApply: true in the plugin are automatically downgraded to “Applied Intelligently” instead of being always applied.
In our plugin, we have several .mdc rule files with alwaysApply: true in the frontmatter. These rules are critical and must be included in every agent conversation. However, after the latest update, Cursor no longer respects the alwaysApply: true setting from plugin rules — they appear as “Applied Intelligently” in the Rules panel, meaning they may or may not be included depending on Cursor’s automatic relevance judgment.
This causes the agent to frequently miss mandatory coding conventions and constraints defined in our team’s rules.
Create a custom plugin with rule files that have alwaysApply: true in the frontmatter.
Install the plugin via Cursor’s plugin system (configured in .cursor/settings.json).
Open a project where the plugin is enabled.
Open the Rules panel — observe that the plugin rules show as “Applied Intelligently” instead of “Always Applied”.
Start an agent chat — observe that the rules are not consistently loaded into the agent’s context.
Expected Behavior
Plugin rules with alwaysApply: true should be respected and always included in the agent’s context, matching the behavior of local .cursor/rules/*.mdc files with the same setting.
Questions
Is this a bug or an intentional change?
If this is by design, what is the recommended way to ensure certain plugin rules are always applied in every agent conversation?
Operating System
macOS (Darwin arm64 24.5.0)
Version Information
Version: 2.7.0-pre.35.patch.0
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 183d374088f4eb28500dc13e8807157ad5646cc0
Date: 2026-03-08T01:52:57.198Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.6.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.5.0
Does this stop you from using Cursor
No — Cursor works, but this issue undermines the reliability of team-shared coding rules via plugins.
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Request ID: f9a7046a-279b-47e5-ab48-6e8dc12daba1
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Additional Information
Add any other context about the problem here.
Does this stop you from using Cursor?
Yes - Cursor is unusable
Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor
No - Cursor works, but with this issue
The more details you provide, the easier it is for us to reproduce and fix the issue. Thanks!
@Colin Hello, first of all, I’m very glad to receive your reply.
After upgrading to version 3.6, although the “rule” in the plugin has changed to “always applied”, it has not been loaded in the context. I couldn’t find this rule in the context records, and even the name and description were not loaded into the context. I adopted the local loading plugin. Here are some records.
@Pilotm1n This should be fixed now! The fix shouldn’t actually require a client update, but for good measure, please try and reproduce on the latest version (3.7.36+).
