Cursor

Cursor

Cursor is transitioning from an IDE-centric model to an agent-first architecture. Rules are the primary configuration mechanism, with skills and subagents as newer additions.

File Overview

Category	File	Scope
Rules	.cursor/rules/*.md	Project rules (plain Markdown)
Rules	.cursor/rules/*.mdc	Project rules (MDC: Markdown + frontmatter)
Rules	.cursorrules	Legacy single-file rules (deprecated)
Skills	.cursor/skills/<name>/SKILL.md	Project-scoped skills
Subagents	.cursor/agents/*.md	Project-scoped subagents
Subagents	.claude/agents/*.md	Claude compatibility (also read by Cursor)
Subagents	.codex/agents/*.toml	Codex compatibility (also read by Cursor)
Settings	~/.cursor/cli-config.json	CLI permissions (user-level)
Settings	.cursor/cli.json	CLI permissions (project-level)
Ignore	.cursorignore	Files excluded from context
Compat	AGENTS.md	Cross-tool instructions (read by Cursor)

Rules

Rules are the core configuration for Cursor. Two formats are supported:

• .md — plain Markdown, always applied
• .mdc — MDC format with YAML frontmatter for conditional application

Rule Frontmatter (MDC format)

---
description: Go layered architecture rules   # What the rule covers
globs:                                        # File patterns that activate this rule
  - "internal/**/*.go"
  - "pkg/**/*.go"
alwaysApply: true                             # Apply regardless of file context
---

Key fields:

• description — tells Cursor when the rule is relevant
• globs — file patterns that trigger the rule
• alwaysApply — force the rule to always be active

Skills

Cursor supports Agent Skills (the emerging open standard). Skills can function as:

• Implicit skills — automatically invoked when the description matches the task
• Explicit commands — invoked only via /skill-name when disable-model-invocation: true is set

Skill Frontmatter

---
name: add-endpoint                    # Skill identifier and slash command name
description: Add a new Go endpoint    # Used for auto-invocation matching
disable-model-invocation: true        # Optional. Makes it a manual-only command
---

Cursor can migrate existing rules and slash commands into skills. Migrated commands get disable-model-invocation: true to preserve explicit-invocation behavior.

Subagents

Cursor reads subagent definitions from multiple locations for cross-tool compatibility:

1. .cursor/agents/ (native)
2. .claude/agents/ (Claude compatibility)
3. .codex/agents/ (Codex compatibility)

Migration Path

The trend in Cursor is:

• .cursorrules (single file) → .cursor/rules/ (multiple files)
• Slash commands → Skills with disable-model-invocation: true
• Rules with reusable workflows → Skills