Possible bug: old user rules from old cursor still existing but not showing up in the UI

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

This is a weird one and I can’t be 100% sure on this because I only have ONE user rule in the GUI, but i had a bunch of them before and they dissappeared. I’m seeing the agent respond to me in ways that suggest my old user rules are still being sent to it in the system prompt but i can’t see any of those rules in the UI. Is there a way I can see everything it’s sending to the agent and why? I made those rules in Cursor 0.48 or something like that i cant even remember but they disappeared sometime in 1.4.x maybe and i’ve always wondered if it kept them around somehow.

Steps to Reproduce

I can’t even be sure it’s happening, but i see the agent responses saying things and acting like some of my old user rules are still there (been seeing this for 6+ months but just now asking about it)

Operating System

Windows 10/11
Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.35
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: cf8353edc265f5e46b798bfb276861d0bf3bf120
Date: 2026-01-13T07:39:18.564Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.6.87.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue. Old rules could really have stayed around after an upgrade.

A similar bug was reported before: User Rules from prior versions appended to Conversation Summary as context with no way to manage/delete
It should’ve been fixed, but based on your case, it might still happen in some situations.

Can you try this workaround:

  • Downgrade to an older Cursor version (where the rules were visible in the UI)
  • Delete all old rules via the UI
  • Update back to the latest version

In that thread, the user could only clear the rules by doing a full reinstall and deleting all config files.

To help us investigate, could you share:

  • Specific examples of agent behavior that suggests old rules are still being applied
  • If you roughly remember what those missing rules said
  • Which version they disappeared from the UI in (if you remember)

If we can confirm it with concrete details, I’ll pass it to the team for another look.

I’ll try that, but the rules are stored on your servers on my account. I noticed when i install cursor on another computer and open the config, my rules were there, so the rules must be stored in my profile on your servers. It would be good to have some way to edit my config on the web dashboard if it can’t be done in the app.

Also, what happejned to the ‘memories’ in the UI? I asked the agent to report back to me all user rules and memories it sees and it has my memories there, but i don’t see the memories in the UI , but the agent can see it… and the agent says it doesn’t have access to any memory tools but the system prompt is telling it that it should have an update memory tool available and sending a list of memories in every prompt (which is quite large)

As for the user rules, some of my old rules had specific language in the way that the agent would behave and the words it used to reply to me , like it would prefix the outputs or act in a certain way.. it doesn’t seem to do it with all agents but i’m seeing it happen a lot in GPT for example, but not Grok or claude.. That’s why i’m not 100% sure

Yes the GPT agent is definitely getting my old user rules, which i cannot edit. I installed 1.2.2 and 1.6.x and i still don’t see user rule edit.. what version has it?
I had the agent print the rules and they are there. Can you make a way to edit our information on the web login on your web site? This is kind of crazy that it’s doing things we can’t control. I’d like to edit these rules since they are always tehre regardless of what project i am working on and it messes up things.
If i delete the local vscdb, i suppose i’ll lose all my chat history which sucks, but that might clear the old rules out as they seem to be stored in there. I guess i could delete them manually using sqlite tool?
I see the user rules in 1.7 1.6 etc but there’s only the one user rule i added recently and none of the others. So this is frustrating, we really need to be able to see the full context of what is being sent to the agent and have control over it in a managable way even if it’s just a json file or something.