Why does cursor ai not remember what i tell it
i keep telling him that my database info is in .env but it keep doing it difrently each time and then when i tell him todo so it wil do it and then the next time it just goes random again, SO ANOYING…
Completely understand the frustration.
I can’t completely explain it. It seems like some things are forgotten in several situations. Starting a new chat can do it. Switching Models seems to do it, sometimes.
I’m trying to put important things like this in the Rules that get attached to every new Chat. Now I have Rules about making new Rules correctly. But it’s helping.
We have to learn more about AI contexts and understand more about what Cursor sends to the models.
Good luck! I’m right there with you.
JBB
how do u add that to every chat
From my experimenting, rules in your project’s .cursor/rules/ directory as files ending in .mdc and having the extra headers are auto-attached and evaluated for every new chat window you open.
- I can go to Cursor Settings → Rules and use the + Add Rule button in the Project Rules section.
- Select the options for it like whether it always applies, or only to certain filetypes like *.py, etc. Those go into the “yaml frontmatter” headers in the rule file it is creating.
- Then add your rule commands to the file.
More advanced, you can create the files in that directory by hand as long as you have the right format.
JBB
Do you have a .gitignore file? If so, I wouldn’t be surprised if .env is included in there and Cursor is ignoring it.
.env files tend to have sensitive information that Cursor doesn’t typically need access to.
I personally get around this by adding the few things I need to the User Rule
.env should definitely be ignored by git! But that doesn’t make it ignored by cursor, otherwise what good would it be? 
It can definitely load my environment variables from there, but for me .env is a file and not a directory.
But yeah, thanks for noticing that, I didn’t think of that when I replied. Odd place for a database. User will have to decide for themselves whether they really want it in the git repository or not, if they’re using one.
Hey, which version of Cursor are you using? .env files are ignored by default in Cursor.
I should have spoken more clearly, sorry. Just because git ignores certain files, or cursor ignores certain files, doesn’t mean the files are unusable entirely. It doesn’t render them invisible.
My code is expecting items in the .env files, and it is using them correctly, even though they are ignored in git.
The user who is putting databases in .env needs to know what they’re doing, because that database isn’t likely to get saved across git commits and could disappear on them unless they change the gitignore settings – and I heartily do not recommend letting git store files from .env, because it’s typically considered safe from being uploaded anywhere; don’t change things like that without lots of mitigation.