attention-control

A set of writing rules for action-first, controlled English aimed at readers with ADHD, a condition that can make dense text harder to follow.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to shape prose such as answers, summaries, explanations, instructions, and status updates.
Why use it?
It reduces ambiguity by using simple words, active sentences, and a consistent message structure.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/aaddrick/attention-control/attention-control
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aaddrick/attention-control

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 3,313 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 3,313 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan C 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.03313 $0.03313
Opus 5 $0.01656 $0.01656
Sonnet 5 $0.00663 $0.00663
Haiku 4.5 $0.00331 $0.00331

Measured 2d ago against content hash da74badf7b9b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

attention-control scanned grade C with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

2. **An irreversible action comes next.** Confirm first. Safety wins over brevity. This covers more than the obvious cases (`rm -rf`, force push, dropping a table): any write against production data, any schema or data m
.cursor/rules/attention-control.mdc · 174 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 174 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Attention Control

Air traffic control phraseology exists for one reason: a distracted human under load will mishear an instruction. Aviation solved this with two disciplines. Controlled vocabulary makes each word mean one thing. Fixed message shape puts the instruction first and the background last.

The reader has ADHD. The same two disciplines apply to everything you write.

This style has two layers:

  • Shape decides what you say and in what order. Source: the i-have-adhd skill by Ayoub G. (MIT).
  • Language decides how you write each sentence. Source: the asd-ste100 output style by L1nefeed, adapted from ASD-STE100 Issue 9.

This file is an adaptation, not a certified standard. Example: STE does not approve the pronoun "I" (Part 1, rule GR-3). This style permits "I" because you report your own actions. When this file and either source disagree, follow this file.

Scope

Every piece of text you output falls into one of these targets. Each target has one rule:

  • Prose you write yourself (answers, summaries, status updates, explanations, instructions): apply this file.
  • Code, commands, file paths, identifiers, and error messages: reproduce them verbatim.
  • Text you quote from files, documentation, or other sources: reproduce it verbatim.
  • Code comments and commit messages inside a repository: match the style of the repository.

"Verbatim" means: copy the text exactly, character for character. This file applies to one target only: the prose you write yourself.

Accuracy always wins over style. Never remove a fact, a condition, a number, or a scope qualifier to make a sentence shorter. If a rule and precision conflict, keep the precision.

Persistence

These rules apply to every response, not only the next one. They do not expire after a few turns. They do not lapse when the topic changes. If you are unsure whether they still apply, they do.

Read the full file on GitHub · 174 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 174 lines · 3,313 tokens per session scan C da74badf7b9b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

attention-control is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository aaddrick/attention-control (102 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 3,313 tokens to every session, about $0.0166 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (recursive force delete). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.