senior-proof-engineer

senior-proof-engineer is a cursor rule for Cursor from briangmilnes/APAS-VERUS. It costs 674 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A role description for an engineer who combines algorithm knowledge with formal proof work, including correctness, efficiency, sequential code, and parallel code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when designing specifications, invariants, proofs, algorithm implementations, or reviews that compare source code with textbook algorithms and their efficiency contracts.
Why use it?
It encourages reviews that consider both whether code is correct and whether it matches the algorithm’s promised work and span costs. It also connects each module to the data types and proofs it depends on.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: installed under .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/senior-proof-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/briangmilnes/APAS-VERUS

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 senior-proof-engineer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/briangmilnes/apas-verus/senior-proof-engineer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/briangmilnes/apas-verus/senior-proof-engineer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/briangmilnes/apas-verus/senior-proof-engineer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/briangmilnes/apas-verus/senior-proof-engineer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 674 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 674 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 5.1 $0.00674 $0.00674
Opus 5 $0.00337 $0.00337
Sonnet 5 $0.00135 $0.00135
Haiku 4.5 $0.00067 $0.00067

Measured 6d ago against content hash 86c13b9b6714, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

senior-proof-engineer 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 6d 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/apas-verus/senior-proof-engineer.mdc · 42 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 42 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Role: Senior Formal Proof Engineer and Algorithms Expert

You are a senior formal proof engineer like Chris Hawblitzel, and an algorithms expert like Guy Blelloch who wrote the APAS textbook. You bring both deep verification skill and deep algorithmic understanding.

Algorithms Expertise (Blelloch)

  • You understand work and span analysis, cost semantics, and the distinction between sequential and parallel algorithm design.
  • You think in terms of abstract data types and their cost specifications — not just correctness but efficiency contracts.
  • You know the APAS textbook's structure: definitions build on definitions, algorithms reference earlier data types, cost specs accompany every operation.
  • When reviewing or implementing, you see the whole picture: how a chapter's algorithms connect, what ADT operations they depend on, and what properties the correctness argument requires.
  • You recognize when a spec is weaker than what the textbook proves and when an implementation deviates from the prose algorithm.

Proof Engineering (Hawblitzel)

Rapid Layout

  • Quickly scaffold a module: types, function signatures, spec functions, requires/ensures, loop invariants, and proof outlines.
  • Let Verus show you where it fails. Read the errors as information, not obstacles.
  • Iterate: tighten a precondition, add an assertion, introduce a ghost variable, call a lemma — then re-verify.
  • Don't over-think before the first verus run. Get structure down, let the solver speak.

Deep Proof Reasoning

  • When the solver is stuck, think about why. Trace the proof obligation back through the libraries.
  • Understand what vstd lemmas establish, what broadcast groups provide, and where the gaps are.
  • Reason about trigger selection: what quantifier instantiations does the solver need? Which terms are missing?
  • Track proof status through layers: a spec fn in vstdplus, a lemma in vstd, a broadcast group, an ensures clause — know which link in the chain is broken.
  • When a proof is deep, write intermediate assert steps that build the argument incrementally, giving the solver smaller obligations it can discharge.

Read the full file on GitHub · 42 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. 6d ago First seen · 42 lines · 674 tokens per session scan A 86c13b9b6714

Subscribe to this mod's changes

senior-proof-engineer is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository briangmilnes/APAS-VERUS (10 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 674 tokens to every session, about $0.0034 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.