Hey, sorry for the delay. Thanks for the detailed analysis and links - this is very helpful.
Regarding tooltip bugs: I completely agree. This is a separate UI bug - “Active Rules” should show all applied rules (including conditional ones with globs/description), not just alwaysApply: true. I’ll note this for the team.
On glob patterns and auto-application: This is confirmed as a known issue. Your test repo perfectly demonstrates the problem.
From experience:
- Composer 1 often ignores conditional rules (globs +
alwaysApply: false) - GPT-5.1/Sonnet 4.5 are better, but don’t always follow them
- Even alwaysApply: true sometimes doesn’t apply automatically on the first request (related discussion)
Temporary workarounds for your workflow:
- For critical rules - use
alwaysApply: true - Temporarily mention explicitly: “Follow globs.mdc, linked.mdc” or add
@.cursor/rules/globs.mdcmanually - Simplify rule structure - complex JSON/Markdown works less predictably, plain text is better
On inspecting context: There’s no built-in way. At most Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console during a request, but the raw prompt isn’t output there.
I’ll pass your minimal repro (with simplest rules) to the engineers - this will really help with the fix.