design-principles

design-principles is a cursor rule for Cursor from DataCovey/nornweave. It costs 0 tokens per session (2,723 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A set of interface rules for precise, minimal dashboards, administration screens, and business software.

In plain words
What is it for?
It guides the choice of design direction, visual personality, spacing, and use of shadcn/ui components when building polished interfaces.
Why use it?
It gives teams a consistent visual direction instead of leaving spacing, components, and overall personality to ad hoc choices.

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/datacovey/nornweave/design-principles
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DataCovey/nornweave

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 design-principles

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/datacovey/nornweave/design-principles.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/datacovey/nornweave/design-principles)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/datacovey/nornweave/design-principles"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/datacovey/nornweave/design-principles.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 2,723 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 $0.02723
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01362
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00545
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00272

Measured 5d ago against content hash a773ed54782f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-principles 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 5d 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/design-principles.mdc · 242 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 242 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design Principles

This rule enforces precise, crafted design for enterprise software, SaaS dashboards, admin interfaces, and web applications. The philosophy is Jony Ive-level precision with intentional personality — every interface is polished, and each is designed for its specific context.

Give priority to the shadcn/ui design components.

Design Direction (REQUIRED)

Before writing any code, commit to a design direction. Don't default. Think about what this specific product needs to feel like.

Think About Context

  • What does this product do? A finance tool needs different energy than a creative tool.
  • Who uses it? Power users want density. Occasional users want guidance.
  • What's the emotional job? Trust? Efficiency? Delight? Focus?
  • What would make this memorable? Every product has a chance to feel distinctive.

Choose a Personality

Enterprise/SaaS UI has more range than you think. Consider these directions:

Precision & Density — Tight spacing, monochrome, information-forward. For power users who live in the tool. Think Linear, Raycast, terminal aesthetics.

Warmth & Approachability — Generous spacing, soft shadows, friendly colors. For products that want to feel human. Think Notion, Coda, collaborative tools.

Sophistication & Trust — Cool tones, layered depth, financial gravitas. For products handling money or sensitive data. Think Stripe, Mercury, enterprise B2B.

Boldness & Clarity — High contrast, dramatic negative space, confident typography. For products that want to feel modern and decisive. Think Vercel, minimal dashboards.

Utility & Function — Muted palette, functional density, clear hierarchy. For products where the work matters more than the chrome. Think GitHub, developer tools.

Data & Analysis — Chart-optimized, technical but accessible, numbers as first-class citizens. For analytics, metrics, business intelligence.

Pick one. Or blend two. But commit to a direction that fits the product.

Read the full file on GitHub · 242 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. 5d ago First seen · 242 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A a773ed54782f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-principles is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository DataCovey/nornweave (27 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,723 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 2026-08-30.