cursor-rules-location

A rule for Cursor rule files, which are project instructions used by the Cursor code editor. It requires these files to use the .mdc extension and live in the .cursor/rules directory.

In plain words
What is it for?
Creating and organizing Cursor rules with descriptive kebab-case filenames in the required directory.
Why use it?
It prevents rule files from being misplaced or named inconsistently, so Cursor can find and organize them correctly.

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/dmno-dev/varlock/cursor-rules-location
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dmno-dev/varlock

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 479 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 479 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 $0.00479 $0.00479
Opus 5 $0.00239 $0.00239
Sonnet 5 $0.00096 $0.00096
Haiku 4.5 $0.00048 $0.00048

Measured yesterday against content hash 1f53b8cfacdd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cursor-rules-location 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

6 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.cursor/rules/cursor-rules-location.mdc · 80 lines

What it actually says


description: Cursor Rules Location globs: *.mdc

Cursor Rules Location

Rules for placing and organizing Cursor rule files in the repository.

actions:

  • type: reject conditions:

    • pattern: "^(?!\.\/\.cursor\/rules\/.*\.mdc$)" message: "Cursor rule files (.mdc) must be placed in the .cursor/rules directory"
  • type: suggest message: | When creating Cursor rules:

    1. Always place rule files in PROJECT_ROOT/.cursor/rules/:

      .cursor/rules/
      ├── your-rule-name.mdc
      ├── another-rule.mdc
      └── ...
      
    2. Follow the naming convention:

      • Use kebab-case for filenames
      • Always use .mdc extension
      • Make names descriptive of the rule's purpose
    3. Directory structure:

      PROJECT_ROOT/
      ├── .cursor/
      │   └── rules/
      │       ├── your-rule-name.mdc
      │       └── ...
      └── ...
      
    4. Never place rule files:

      • In the project root
      • In subdirectories outside .cursor/rules
      • In any other location

examples:

  • input: |

    Bad: Rule file in wrong location

    rules/my-rule.mdc my-rule.mdc .rules/my-rule.mdc

    Good: Rule file in correct location

    .cursor/rules/my-rule.mdc output: "Correctly placed Cursor rule file"

metadata: priority: high version: 1.0

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 · 80 lines · 479 tokens per session scan A 1f53b8cfacdd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cursor-rules-location is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository dmno-dev/varlock (4,238 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 479 tokens to every session, about $0.0024 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 2026-08-30.