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.
npx agentmods add rules/barisercan/cursorrules/minimal-changes-policygit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/barisercan/cursorrulesWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00596 | $0.00596 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00298 | $0.00298 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00119 | $0.00119 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00060 | $0.00060 |
Grade A, and why
minimal-changes-policy 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 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.
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.
What it actually says
description: Enforce conservative coding practices that make only user-requested changes without assumptions globs: "**/*" alwaysApply: true
Minimal Changes Policy
Enforce conservative coding practices that prioritize user intent and minimal scope changes.
actions:
-
type: enforce message: | STRICT POLICY: Minimal Changes Only
NEVER do more than the user explicitly requested:
-
NO ASSUMPTIONS:
- Do not assume user needs additional features
- Do not add "helpful" extras not requested
- Do not anticipate future requirements
- Ask clarifying questions if uncertain
-
SCOPE LIMITATIONS:
- Change ONLY what user specified
- Modify only ONE file per request (unless updating docs or splitting files)
- Make small, incremental changes
- Stop after completing the specific request
-
CLARIFICATION REQUIRED:
- Ask questions when requirements are unclear
- Request specific details rather than guessing
- Confirm scope before making changes
- Never hallucinate requirements
-
SIMPLICITY FOCUS:
- Do not overcomplicate the codebase
- Keep solutions simple and direct
- Avoid architectural changes unless requested
- Maintain existing patterns
-
TESTING:
- Run tests after making changes if tests exist
- Verify changes work as intended
- Report any test failures immediately
EXCEPTIONS (only change multiple files when):
- Updating related .md or .mdc documentation files
- Splitting a single file into multiple files
- User explicitly requests multi-file changes
-
examples:
-
input: | User: "Fix this bug in login.js"
Bad: Also refactor authentication, add logging, update styles
Good: Fix only the specific bug mentioned
output: "Fixed only the specific bug in login.js"
-
input: | User: "Add a button to the header"
Bad: Also improve header layout, add animations, update theme
Good: Add only the requested button
output: "Added only the requested button to header"
metadata: priority: critical version: 1.0 enforcement: strict
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 90 lines · 596 tokens per session scan A 435a3856a16f
minimal-changes-policy is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository barisercan/cursorrules (35 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It adds 596 tokens to every session, about $0.0030 per session on Opus 5. 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.
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