Rules in home folder (~/.cursor/rules) are not applied

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Rules in home folder (~/.cursor/rules) are not applied. From the Cursor 2.1 change log at https://cursor.com/changelog/2-1, I believe this should work.

Rules in home folder (~/.cursor/rules) will be included in context

Steps to Reproduce

Add a simple rule at ~/.cursor/rules/<rule_name>.mdc For example

---
alwaysApply: true
---

The agent should say "Hi, I am Batman" at the end of the response.

Submit a simple prompt using any model.

Expected Behavior

I’d expect “Hi, I am Batman” but it is never included.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.2.43
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 32cfbe848b35d9eb320980195985450f244b3030
Date: 2025-12-19T06:06:44.644Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.3.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

4

Thanks for the detailed report! You can define User Rules in Cursor Settings → Rules as mentioned in docs Rules | Cursor Docs

5

I’m aware of that feature, but there are a few main drawbacks

  • no way to apply rules conditionally
  • I need share the rules with my team
    • my organization doesn’t allow us to use team rules
    • each user should be able to slightly modify the rules

Once again, here’s the wording from the Cursor 2.1 changelog.

Rules in home folder (~/.cursor/rules) will be included in context

This seems like it suits my needs, but didn’t work (rules in my user home are ignored). So it’s either…

  • A Cursor IDE bug
  • Documentation error
  • User error

Please let us know which one!

6

I think this is a bug. I’m checking with the team on this.

As a workaround until it’s fixed, you can use Project Rules within your project/repository, though I understand that doesn’t fully solve your team sharing constraints. I’ll post here as soon as there’s any update.