authoring-guidelines

A rulebook for writing PHP tutorial chapters in a consistent format. It defines required page details, naming patterns, and chapter structure.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating or reviewing PHP tutorial chapters, including their metadata, file names, difficulty levels, and prerequisites.
Why use it?
It removes guesswork about how chapters should be organised and formatted, helping a tutorial series stay consistent.

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/dalehurley/codewithphp/authoring-guidelines
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dalehurley/codewithphp

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 2,445 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 $0.02445
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01222
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00489
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00245

Measured yesterday against content hash 499d02f6b8a1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

authoring-guidelines 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 yesterday.

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/authoring-guidelines.mdc · 442 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 442 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Authoring Guidelines for Code with PHP Tutorials

This document defines the structure, formatting, and conventions for all tutorial chapters based on the established patterns in the php-basics series.

Frontmatter Requirements

Every chapter MUST include this frontmatter structure:

---
title: "NN: Chapter Title Here"
description: "One-sentence description of what the reader will learn"
series: "series-slug"
chapter: N
order: N
difficulty: "Beginner|Intermediate|Advanced"
prerequisites:
  - "/series/series-slug/chapters/previous-chapter"
  - "Another prerequisite if needed"
---

Field Specifications:

  • title: Format as "NN: Title" where NN is zero-padded chapter number
  • description: Single sentence, action-oriented, no period at end
  • series: Must match the series directory name
  • chapter and order: Usually the same number (but order can differ for special chapters)
  • difficulty: One of three values: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
  • prerequisites: Array of chapter links (absolute paths) or text requirements

File Naming Conventions

Chapters:

  • Format: series/<series-slug>/chapters/<nn>-<chapter-slug>.md
  • Use zero-padded two-digit numbers: 00, 01, 02, etc.
  • Use kebab-case for slugs: building-a-simple-blog
  • Examples: 01-your-first-php-script.md, 19-project-building-a-simple-blog.md

Code Samples:

  • Store in /code/<series-slug>/<chapter-nn>-topic/ at the project root
  • Use descriptive filenames: basic-functions.php, validation-example.php
  • Include a README.md in each code directory explaining the examples
  • Place exercise solutions in /code/<series-slug>/<chapter-nn>-topic/solutions/

Chapter Structure Template

Every chapter MUST follow this exact structure:

# Chapter NN: Chapter Title

## Overview

A compelling 2-4 paragraph introduction that:

- Explains what the chapter covers and why it matters
- Connects to previous learning
- Previews what the reader will build
- Sets clear expectations

## Prerequisites

Before starting this chapter, you should have:

- Specific requirement with link
- PHP version requirement
- Software/tools needed
- **Estimated Time**: ~XX minutes

## What You'll Build

By the end of this chapter, you will have created:

- Specific deliverable 1
- Specific deliverable 2
- Knowledge/skill gained
- Working example with X features

## Quick Start (Optional)

A 5-minute copy-paste example showing the end result:

```bash

Read the full file on GitHub · 442 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. yesterday First seen · 442 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 499d02f6b8a1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

authoring-guidelines is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository dalehurley/codewithphp (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,445 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 2026-08-31.