code-design

A set of principles for designing code and software architecture, including how to manage state, separate models, and structure components.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when planning or reviewing architecture, choosing between composition and inheritance, separating database and API models, and controlling dependencies and shared state.
Why use it?
It helps prevent hidden dependencies, tightly coupled code, exposed implementation details, and designs that are difficult to change.

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/jacoby6000/smithplates/code-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Jacoby6000/Smithplates

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 641 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 641 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 $0.00641 $0.00641
Opus 5 $0.00320 $0.00320
Sonnet 5 $0.00128 $0.00128
Haiku 4.5 $0.00064 $0.00064

Measured yesterday against content hash b237d514ec7b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

code-design 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.

.cursor/rules/code-design.mdc · 60 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 60 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Code Design Principles

  • Avoid global mutable state. Pass dependencies and state explicitly; no hidden singletons or shared mutable globals.
  • Avoid leaky abstractions. An interface must not expose the details of its implementation (storage engine, transport, vendor SDK). Callers depend on the abstraction, never on what leaks through it.
  • Favor composition over inheritance. Compose small, focused pieces; reserve inheritance for genuine substitutable is-a relationships.
  • Principle of least power. Use the least powerful tool that solves the problem — prefer data over configuration, configuration over code, a pure function over a stateful object, a constant over a computation. Reach for more power only when required.
  • Don't share database and transport models. Keep persistence models, API/ wire (transport) models, and domain models separate, even when they look alike. Map between them explicitly so each can evolve independently.
  • Avoid private declarations. Prefer not to lock callers out. Instead of making a declaration private, leave it accessible but document that it is not part of the intended/stable interface — callers may have a valid, unforeseen use case. Mark such declarations as an unstable implementation surface that may change without notice, using the language's nearest convention (e.g. a _-prefixed name, a #[doc(hidden)]/@internal/@unstable marker, or an "internal — not part of the public API; subject to change" note).

Scala: nested internal object (Smithplates)

In this repository, move implementation helpers out of private into a public nested object internal on the enclosing companion:

object SqlIrExtractor {
  def extract(model: Model): SqlValidated[SqlSchema] =
    model.getStructureShapes.asScala.toList
      .filter(_.sqlTable.isDefined)
      .traverse(internal.extractTable(_, model))
      .map(internal.buildSchema)

  /** Internal implementation surface — not part of the stable API; subject to change without notice. */
  object internal {
    def extractTable(...): SqlValidated[SqlTable] = ...
    def buildSchema(...): SqlSchema = ...
  }
}

Read the full file on GitHub · 60 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. yesterday First seen · 60 lines · 641 tokens per session scan A b237d514ec7b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code-design is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository Jacoby6000/Smithplates (2 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 641 tokens to every session, about $0.0032 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.