reference-chapters

A set of rules for writing reference chapters: quick-start guides, cheat sheets, and lookup pages. These pages help developers find practical answers without following a full lesson.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to structure quick starts, common-task guides, decision trees, and syntax or function cheat sheets.
Why use it?
It keeps reference material easy to scan when someone needs an answer quickly. It also separates short, copy-ready solutions from detailed teaching.

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/reference-chapters
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 2,758 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 $0.02758
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01379
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00552
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00276

Measured yesterday against content hash 715ff146b807, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

reference-chapters 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/reference-chapters.mdc · 480 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 480 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Reference Chapter Guidelines

Reference chapters serve a different purpose than traditional tutorial chapters. They are designed for quick lookup, copy-paste solutions, and rapid problem-solving rather than step-by-step learning.

What is a Reference Chapter?

A reference chapter is a specialized chapter type that:

  • Provides quick solutions to common problems
  • Offers copy-paste ready code snippets
  • Uses a non-linear structure for easy scanning
  • Focuses on practical application over explanation
  • Serves as a quick lookup guide or cheat sheet

Types of Reference Chapters

1. Quick Start Guides

Purpose: Get developers productive in 5-15 minutes Examples: 00-quick-start-guide.md, 00-getting-started.md

Structure:

  • Brief introduction ("Got 5 minutes?")
  • Clear note that this is a reference guide
  • "I Need To..." or "Common Tasks" sections
  • Decision trees or flowcharts
  • Copy-paste snippets with minimal explanation
  • Links to detailed chapters for deeper learning

2. Cheat Sheets

Purpose: Quick reference for syntax, patterns, or common operations Examples: Complexity cheat sheet, PHP functions reference

Structure:

  • Organized by category or use case
  • Tables, lists, or compact code blocks
  • Minimal prose, maximum examples
  • Cross-references to detailed documentation

3. Lookup Guides

Purpose: Help developers find the right tool/algorithm for their problem Examples: Algorithm selection guide, framework comparison

Structure:

  • Decision trees or flowcharts
  • Use case → solution mappings
  • When to use X vs Y comparisons
  • Performance considerations

Frontmatter for Reference Chapters

Reference chapters use standard frontmatter with a note in difficulty:

---
title: "Quick Start Guide"
description: "Get started in 5 minutes with practical solutions"
series: "series-slug"
chapter: 0
order: 0
difficulty: "beginner"  # Or appropriate difficulty
prerequisites: []  # Usually empty for quick starts
---

Read the full file on GitHub · 480 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 · 480 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 715ff146b807

Subscribe to this mod's changes

reference-chapters 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 2,758 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.