Plugin rules with alwaysApply: true are silently downgraded to "Applied Intelligently"

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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor Plugins / Rules in Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

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.

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Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create a custom plugin with rule files that have alwaysApply: true in the frontmatter.

  2. Install the plugin via Cursor’s plugin system (configured in .cursor/settings.json).

  3. Open a project where the plugin is enabled.

  4. Open the Rules panel — observe that the plugin rules show as “Applied Intelligently” instead of “Always Applied”.

  5. 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.

2

Hi there!

We detected that this may be a bug report, so we’ve moved your post to the Bug Reports category.

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Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

  • Cursor IDE
  • Cursor CLI
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Describe the Bug
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Operating System

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Version Information

  • For Cursor IDE: Menu → About Cursor → Copy
  • For Cursor CLI: Run agent about in your terminal
IDE:
Version: 2.xx.x
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: ......

CLI:
CLI Version 2026.01.17-d239e66

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Does this stop you from using Cursor?

  • Yes - Cursor is unusable
  • Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor
  • No - Cursor works, but with this issue

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