Warn when .mdc files exist without alwaysApply: true

Feature request for product/service

Cursor CLI

Describe the request

If you have .cursor/rules/*.mdc files without alwaysApply: true in the frontmatter, the agent silently ignores them. I tested this: identical .mdc files, one with alwaysApply: true (3/3 compliance) and one with alwaysApply: false (0/3 compliance).

There’s no indication that your rules aren’t being loaded. You just get unexpected output and have to figure out why.

Request: When cursor agent starts, check for .mdc files that don’t have alwaysApply: true and show a warning like:

Warning: rules/my-rule.mdc does not have alwaysApply: true and will not be applied in agent mode.

This would save people a lot of debugging time. The current behavior looks like the rules are broken when really the flag is just missing.

Related: I also filed a bug report about .cursorrules being silently ignored in agent mode (same root issue of no feedback when rules aren’t loaded).