dot

A project instruction meaning “Don't Over Think.” It says to complete a straightforward request using the smallest change needed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when the user explicitly says DOT or gives a clear, narrow task with no request for broader changes.
Why use it?
It limits unnecessary refactoring, extra safeguards, and unrelated improvements that could make a simple task larger or harder to review.

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/briangmilnes/apas-verus/dot
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/briangmilnes/APAS-VERUS

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 179 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 179 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
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 $0.00179 $0.00179
Opus 5 $0.00089 $0.00089
Sonnet 5 $0.00036 $0.00036
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00018

Measured 2d ago against content hash e52b317c0244, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dot 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.

.cursor/rules/interaction/dot.mdc · 21 lines

What it actually says

DOT — Don't Over Think

When the user says "DOT" or the task is straightforward:

  • DO: Execute exactly what was asked, nothing more.

  • DO: Take the simplest path to the goal.

  • DO: Make the minimal change that satisfies the request.

  • DO NOT: Anticipate future problems that weren't asked about.

  • DO NOT: Refactor, restructure, or "improve" beyond the request.

  • DO NOT: Explore alternatives when the user gave a clear direction.

  • DO NOT: Add defensive code, extra assertions, or commentary beyond what's needed.

If the user said to do X, do X. Not X plus Y plus Z.

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 · 21 lines · 179 tokens per session scan A e52b317c0244

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dot is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository briangmilnes/APAS-VERUS (10 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 179 tokens to every session, about $0.0009 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 2026-08-31.