Currently, as far as I know, rules in Cursor can only be defined at the project level. While this works well in most cases, there are situations where I’d like to use some personal, manual rules that I don’t want to commit to the main project repo. Global user rules are always applied, which is gre…

Hi @belmin and welcome to Cursor Forum. Thank you kindly for your feature request. Please check Cursor Settings > Rules menu, there are User Rules already available. Overall there are .cursorrules, Project Rules, User Rules, Memories that can be used in a similar way depending on preferences and n…

Thanks for the reply @condor but User Rules are something else. User rules are always applied globally. As mentioned in the official documentation . In simple terms what I am describing is having the ability to select a folder with additional rules which are not in the project directory (outside of …

… or even just extend the current user rules functionality to be able to @ a specific rule in the chat and apply it manually instead of them being always applied.

Hey, you have the option to attach the necessary project rules to the conversation instead of relying on the agent. This will also work if you add a markdown file with your rules to the chat context. [image]

I appreciate the reply but this is not what this post is about. I know how to add rules and @-ing Rules allows you to add only rules defined in the project directory which is the problem. On commercial codebases (or any shared codebases) one should not have to commit their own rules to use them.

Hello, I’m writing to support Belmin’s request regarding rule management in Cursor. While Cursor is a fantastic tool for accelerating development, the current approach to user rules being global across all projects is a significant limitation. I frequently switch between projects using different s…

Adding my own support to this requests - it mirrors my own [image] File-backed / agent-editable User Rules (parity with project `.cursor/rules`) Feature Requests Feature request for product/service Cursor IDE Describe the request Problem User Rules are the g…

User Based Cursor Rules

Ideas Feature Requests

Jeff_Krueger (Jeff Krueger) July 18, 2026, 3:19am 8

Adding my own support to this requests - it mirrors my own

Oops - just saw I replied to a 12-month old item…

Topic		Replies	Views
Use .cursorrules outside repo Feature Requests	6	597	May 31, 2025
Global .cursor/rules directory Feature Requests	23	6574	June 3, 2026
File-backed / agent-editable User Rules (parity with project `.cursor/rules`) Feature Requests rules	0	49	July 18, 2026
.cursor/rules requested enhancements Feature Requests	5	517	February 12, 2025
Multiple .cursorrules Feature Requests	8	4415	January 11, 2025

User Based Cursor Rules

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