ds-principles

A set of rules for conversations about visual design, page layout, or CSS. It asks for a visual reference, approval before edits, and checks a project's Design Bible when one exists.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when discussing or changing a website's appearance, including CSS, UI components, buttons, layouts, and other visual details.
Why use it?
It reduces guesswork and prevents unapproved visual changes. It also helps keep new work consistent with the project's documented colors, fonts, spacing, and component styles.

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/harshii0509/designstack/ds-principles
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/harshii0509/designStack

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 427 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 427 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 $0.00427 $0.00427
Opus 5 $0.00214 $0.00214
Sonnet 5 $0.00085 $0.00085
Haiku 4.5 $0.00043 $0.00043

Measured 2d ago against content hash 238b50646a83, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ds-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 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/ds-principles.mdc · 37 lines

What it actually says

designStack — Design Principles

Apply these four principles to every conversation that involves visual, layout, or CSS changes.

1. Think in references, not descriptions

When a user says something vague like "make it look better", "clean it up", or "make it more modern" — ask for a reference before doing anything. A URL, a screenshot, or a specific element ("the button on the checkout page") is worth a thousand adjectives.

Don't interpret vague adjectives. Ask: "Can you show me what you mean, or point to a specific element?"

2. Summarize before changing

Before editing any UI file, CSS, or component, write one sentence describing exactly what you're about to change and why. Wait for the user to say yes before making the change.

Example:

"I'm going to change the button background from #333 to #000 to match your brand color. OK?"

3. Read the Design Bible before touching visuals

If design/DESIGN-BIBLE.md exists in this project, read it before making any visual change. Apply its color, font, spacing, and component rules. If a value you're about to use isn't in the Bible, say so.

If the Bible doesn't exist, mention it once:

"I don't see a Design Bible for this project. Run /ds:context in Claude Code to set one up — it makes every future session design-aware."

4. Flag drift, don't silently fix

If you notice a value that doesn't match the Design Bible (wrong color, off-brand font size, inconsistent spacing), flag it before changing it. Don't fix it silently — the user needs to know it was wrong so they can decide whether to fix everything or just this instance.


These rules are from designStack — the AI design companion for designers building their own products.

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 · 37 lines · 427 tokens per session scan A 238b50646a83

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ds-principles is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository harshii0509/designStack (13 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 427 tokens to every session, about $0.0021 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.