# Rules f(project) skills f(agent)

**URL:** <https://forum.cursor.com/t/rules-f-project-skills-f-agent/148212>\
**Category:** Discussions\
**Created:** [January 7, 2026, 2:31pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/rules-f-project-skills-f-agent/148212 "2026-01-07T14:31:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ymoisan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/ymoisan/32/6100_2.png) [@ymoisan](https://forum.cursor.com/u/ymoisan)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2026, 2:31pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/rules-f-project-skills-f-agent/148212/1 "2026-01-07T14:31:18Z")

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Continuing on from [Questions regarding Agent Skills and its relationship with .cursorrules - #2 by deanrie](https://forum.cursor.com/t/questions-regarding-agent-skills-and-its-relationship-with-cursorrules/148080/2)

I suspect quite a few people use Cursor as an enabler for a wide variety of programming tasks involving more than one language. I’ve been using Cursor for Rust and JS even though I’m more proficient in Python. So I work on more than one project, generally.

So, if Rules are “per project”, what is the best practice to tell Cursor which rules file applies to current\_project ?

On the other hand, skills are “per agent”. Given rules for current\_project, what are best practices to assign skills to agents ? And select model as a function of given task to said agents in order to minimize ops costs ? Like I wouldn’t want to waste Opus credits on low skills tasks ? I’m still a bit overwhelmed by multi-agent use 😉

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**Author:** ![sabriguenes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/sabriguenes/32/74434_2.png) [@sabriguenes](https://forum.cursor.com/u/sabriguenes)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2026, 10:41am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/rules-f-project-skills-f-agent/148212/2 "2026-01-08T10:41:03Z")

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## Short-term (Today):

- Create AGENTS.md in each project with commands, structure, and guidelines

- Use **`.cursor/rules/`** for project-specific standards (Always Apply)

- Create separate Agent chats for different task types

- Switch models on task complexity

## Medium-term (Once Skills are stable in Cursor):

- Install Skills\*\*`.cursor/skills/`\*\*

- Create custom Skills for your most frequent workflow

## Best Practices:

- **Rules** : “Coding standards for THIS project” (e.g., “Always use Rust 1.75+”)

- **Skills** : “How to perform THIS task” (e.g., “How to write Rust unit tests”)

- **AGENTS.md** : “Universal project info” (works across all tools) =\> Very good in context and reducing tokens btw.

- **New Chats** : Start a new chat for each feature to avoid context overload

I would also suggest to play around with /commands when it comes to specific tasks. You Don’t need Opus for everything, you can plan with Opus and execute with Composer-1

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**Author:** ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/system/32/99069_2.png) [@system](https://forum.cursor.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2026, 10:41am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/rules-f-project-skills-f-agent/148212/3 "2026-04-08T10:41:10Z")

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