I just realized Rules have changed, with no obvious notice as usual. I went to rules settings and saw they are all marked as “Always apply” and “Incorrect format, fix with agent”. Wouldn’t it be great if agents were always applying these rules now all the time for weeks huh… One rule was also no longer there, undetected by IDE. Great.
I’ve been using these rules only by manually calling them with @ to help models implement specific types of objects, so I had them set to only apply manually. But now under rules setting there are only 3 options “Always applied”, “Agent decides when to apply” and “Apply to Specific Files & Folders”. I obviously don’t want any of them. Where is the option to only apply them manually? Am I suppose to use “Agent decides when to apply”? But I don’t want them spending resources to decide that. Am I suppose to use Skills now? Unclear. What about Commands? Unclear. The rules editor in the cursor IDE is also bad and lacking and doesn’t allow you to open/edit mdc anymore without locating it in the folder first. There I edit it with “alwaysApply: false” and get a drop down which allows me to set “Apply manually”, unlike in the cursor rules IDE. Ok I do that, but then cursor IDE still says “Apply always” and “Incorrect format”, and “fix with agent” says either the rule is missing description (which gets removed if you select “Apply Manually”), or I must add glob pattern for files, or set it to always apply, none of which I want. So what must I do? Just use the rule manually even though IDE says “Apply always” and “Incorrect format” and hope they’re not always being applied? Sigh.
Hey, thanks for the report. The Apply Manually mode is still supported, it’s just set directly via frontmatter in the .mdc file.
If you want the rule to run only when you manually call it via @rule-name, use this frontmatter:
---
globs:
alwaysApply: false
---
So it’s alwaysApply: false, with no description and no globs. That’s what makes the rule manual-only, it only applies when you explicitly call it with @ in chat.
About Settings UI showing Always apply and Incorrect format, this looks like a UI bug in the settings panel. Functionally, with this frontmatter the rule won’t be applied automatically. You can confirm it by opening the .mdc file directly, not through Settings, and the dropdown should correctly show Apply Manually.
Docs for all rule types: Rules | Cursor Docs
I shared the Settings UI mismatch with the team. If you’ve got more questions, feel free to reach out.