ne-fail-open

ne-fail-open is a cursor rule for Cursor from AlphaBitCore/nexus-gateway. It costs 0 tokens per session (564 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A safety rule for a macOS network extension that intercepts outgoing traffic. Fail-open means traffic is allowed through when the extension cannot safely handle it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when changing NETransparentProxyProvider flow handling, daemon callbacks, timeouts, protocol checks, or enforcement settings.
Why use it?
It prevents a stalled or crashed extension from cutting off the Mac's DNS, VPN, messaging, time-sync, and other network services.

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/alphabitcore/nexus-gateway/ne-fail-open
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlphaBitCore/nexus-gateway

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for ne-fail-open

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/alphabitcore/nexus-gateway/ne-fail-open.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/alphabitcore/nexus-gateway/ne-fail-open)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/alphabitcore/nexus-gateway/ne-fail-open"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/alphabitcore/nexus-gateway/ne-fail-open.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 564 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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 $0.00000 $0.00564
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00282
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00113
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00056

Measured 4d ago against content hash 2f0f58f3bd80, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ne-fail-open scanned grade A with 0 findings 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 4d 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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/ne-fail-open.mdc · 36 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 36 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

macOS NE proxy must fail-open (binding, safety-critical)

You are editing NETransparentProxyProvider territory. This code is in the host's outbound packet path. Any hang / panic / silently-claimed-but-not-relayed flow takes down the entire Mac's network — DNS, DHCP, mDNS, NTP, Apple Push, VPNs. Recovery requires launchctl unload + plist delete.

Read docs/developers/architecture/services/agent/agent-ne-fail-open-architecture.md BEFORE editing.

The 5 binding fail-open rules

  1. handleNewFlow decides synchronously. Only return true for flows we can fully relay. UDP without a relay implementation = return false for unknown bundles. Apply protocol / bundle-ID checks BEFORE claiming.
  2. Every async callback into the daemon has a fail-open timeout. requestDecision → passthrough after 2s. peekSNIThenRelay → plain relay after 500ms. Never let a flow hang on an absent daemon.
  3. No hardcoded enforcement lists in NE Swift code. Bundle-ID allowlists etc. live in the Hub-pushed agent_settings shadow → daemon writes to /var/run/nexus-agent/quic-bundles.json → NE reads file-only with empty-as-fail-safe.
  4. isLikelyXyz = true patterns are banned. Either write the real condition or return false. Don't flip a TODO and ship.
  5. System DNS / DHCP / Push services MUST NEVER have UDP closed. mdnsresponder, configd, dhcpcd, apsd, nsurlsessiond, kdc, ntpd — validate every kill-list addition.

Test invariants before merging

  • Boot on a fresh macOS; verify Wi-Fi browsing works (DNS / DHCP / HTTPS).
  • Disable the Hub; verify network still works.
  • Send malformed flows (random UDP, unknown TCP); verify nothing hangs.
  • Watch QUIC handshake handling; never both pass-through and capture.
  • Run 24h on a dev machine; no "did I lose internet?" question.

Build & sign

Use .claude/skills/build-agent (binding). Never run wails build / codesign / xcrun notarytool manually.

Skipping this rule requires explicit user approval in chat.

Read the full file on GitHub · 36 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. 4d ago First seen · 36 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 2f0f58f3bd80

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ne-fail-open is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository AlphaBitCore/nexus-gateway (23 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 564 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.