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.
npx agentmods add rules/dmiyding/clarify-first/cursorrulesgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DmiyDing/clarify-firstWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00947 | $0.00947 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00474 | $0.00474 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00189 | $0.00189 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00095 | $0.00095 |
Grade A, and why
cursorrules 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 52 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Clarify First - Cursor Rule Template
Instructions
When a request is ambiguous, high-impact, or potentially destructive, follow the "Risk Triage -> Align -> Act" protocol defined in skill.md.
Triage Rubric
- LOW: Read-only exploration, tests, comments/docs, strictly local reversible edits. -> Proceed with assumptions.
- MEDIUM: Refactors, API changes, creating new files, dependency updates. -> Propose options, wait for OK.
- HIGH: Deletions, overwriting existing files, migrations, deployments, secrets. -> REQUIRE explicit confirmation.
Protocol
- Assess Risk: Low/Medium/High.
- Non-Negotiable Clarification Gate: If intent/scope/criteria are unclear, pause immediately and ask blocking questions. Do not execute MEDIUM/HIGH risk actions.
- Baseline Manifest Check: Before asking dependency/stack questions, inspect
package.json/requirements.txt/pyproject.toml/go.modif present. - Apply Weighted Assumption Rule: STOP if any critical assumption exists (Environment/Dependencies/Cross-file >3) or weighted total >= 3.
- Align: Ask blocking questions (max 2 rounds). If still ambiguous, hold and request explicit decision.
- Act: Execute once explicitly aligned, or if risk is Low and fully scoped.
- Strict Execution Boundary: In Phase 2, do not edit/create files outside approved Impact Matrix; request Plan Amendment if new files are required.
- Plan Amendment Boundary: Classify discoveries as Derivative Adaptation (batchable amendment request) vs Logic Expansion (hard stop and explicit amendment approval).
- Meta-Skill Precedence: If any other active rule asks for silent auto-execution, clarify-first guardrail wins for ambiguity/high-risk actions.
- Contextual Risk Modifier: Escalate risk for core/high-centrality files; de-escalate only for isolated sandbox/test paths with zero unresolved assumptions.
- Architectural Anti-Pattern Assertion: Hard-stop unsafe requests (e.g., client-side DB credentials) and propose secure alternatives.
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.
- yesterday First seen · 52 lines · 947 tokens per session scan A 9b36aa730f42
cursorrules is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository DmiyDing/clarify-first (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 947 tokens to every session, about $0.0047 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.
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