project-onboarding

Rules for examining a new software project’s files, technology choices, folders, and dependencies, then creating a project-context file that guides later rule selection.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when onboarding or analyzing a project, or when its structure has changed enough that its project-context file needs to be created or regenerated.
Why use it?
They reduce guesswork about which coding guidance applies to each part of the project and identify when that guidance is missing or outdated.

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/goranerhartic/cursor-development-rules/project-onboarding
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/GoranErhartic/cursor-development-rules

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 44 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 994 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 $0.00044 $0.00994
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00497
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00199
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00099

Measured 2d ago against content hash 75d570a478b2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

project-onboarding 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 2d 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/development/project-onboarding.mdc · 83 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 83 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Project Onboarding

Run this procedure when:

  • The user asks to "onboard" to the project or "analyze" the project for rules
  • project-context.mdc is missing, empty, or contains only placeholders
  • The project structure has changed significantly and routing may be stale

Output: Regenerate or create project-context.mdc with accurate project metadata so the agent can load the right stack routers without inferring from open files.

Procedure

1. Scan for dependency manifests and configs

Search the repository (from workspace root) for:

File pattern Indicates
package.json Node.js / TypeScript; check for React, Lambda, CDK deps
tsconfig.json TypeScript usage; path hints for app vs lib
cdk.json, **/cdk/**, **/functions/**, **/*.handler.ts AWS Lambda + CDK stack
**/*.tsx, vite.config.*, next.config.* React frontend stack
pom.xml, build.gradle* Java stack
*.csproj, *.sln C# / .NET stack

Use these to infer which of the five routers apply: languages/aws-lambda/nodejs-lambda.mdc, languages/nodejs/nodejs-base.mdc, languages/java/java-spring.mdc, languages/csharp/csharp-dotnet.mdc, languages/react/react-frontend.mdc.

2. Map directories to stacks

For each detected stack, identify the directory or path pattern that contains that stack:

  • AWS Lambda / Node.js: Paths matching router globs: **/functions/**, **/lambda/**, **/handlers/**, **/*.handler.ts, **/cdk/**
  • Node.js / TypeScript (base): Directories with package.json + .ts but excluding Lambda/CDK/React paths
  • React: Directories with .tsx, Vite/Next configs
  • Java / Spring: Directories with pom.xml or build.gradle
  • C# / .NET: Directories with *.csproj

List each relevant directory (e.g. packages/api, apps/web, backend) and the router file it maps to.

3. Detect project type

  • Monorepo: Multiple packages/apps (e.g. multiple package.json, or workspace root with packages/)
  • Monolith: Single application root
  • Microservices: Multiple deployable services in separate roots

Read the full file on GitHub · 83 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. 2d ago First seen · 83 lines · 44 tokens per session scan A 75d570a478b2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

project-onboarding is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository GoranErhartic/cursor-development-rules (19 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 44 tokens to every session and 994 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.