I understand your concern. Custom Modes were intentionally removed in Cursor 2.1, and many users have shared similar concerns in the main thread.
For system prompts and custom instructions, the suggested replacement is Commands Commands | Cursor Docs, but I agree it doesn’t cover everything Custom Modes could do, especially tool control, MCP, and pinning to specific models.
Your feedback is valuable and I’ll pass it along to the team. There are a few active feature requests to bring this functionality back:
- Return the Custom Modes features
- Explicit tool and mcp permissions for custom commands (Custom Mode removal breaks compliance)
I’d recommend adding your use case and a vote to those threads. The team tracks that feedback when planning product work.