development-engineering

A set of general rules for implementing software while fitting the project’s existing structure, patterns, and technology choices.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps developers inspect a project before changing it, place logic in suitable modules, preserve boundaries, and provide evidence that the result works.
Why use it?
It reduces unnecessary rewrites, inconsistent architecture, oversized files, and code that cannot be properly checked.

Cursor rule

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/jterratsdev/ableton-live-mcp/development-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jterratsdev/ableton-live-mcp
Per session 1,267 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,267 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 $0.01267 $0.01267
Opus 5 $0.00633 $0.00633
Sonnet 5 $0.00253 $0.00253
Haiku 4.5 $0.00127 $0.00127

Measured yesterday against content hash 9d774d70cd61, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

development-engineering 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.

rules/development-engineering.mdc · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Development Engineering

Developer work must start from the existing project shape, preserve the local architecture, and leave verifiable evidence that the changed production artifact works.

Project Context First

  • Read the project manifest, build files, framework config, and existing module boundaries before generating code.
  • Infer naming, layering, dependency direction, error style, logging style, and test conventions from nearby code.
  • Do not introduce a new framework pattern, repository style, package layout, or dependency injection approach without a recorded architecture decision.
  • Keep framework-specific adapters at the boundary. Domain and service code should remain portable where the product permits it.
  • Before writing to an existing file, run a module-boundary check: current file size, responsibility, exported surface, and whether the new behavior belongs in domain, model, service, repository, or adapter code.
  • Do not increase god-file risk. If a file is already large, multi-purpose, or adapter-shaped, prefer adding a focused module and wiring it from the existing entry point instead of adding more logic.

Entry Points And Layers

  • Controllers, routes, commands, triggers, handlers, jobs, and webhooks must stay thin.
  • Delegate business rules to services or domain modules, and delegate I/O to repositories, clients, gateways, or data-access modules.
  • Keep request parsing, authorization, validation, orchestration, and persistence responsibilities separate enough that each can be tested directly.
  • Public APIs and CLI commands must define request, response, errors, pagination, compatibility, and idempotency before implementation.
  • Developer-owned code, scripts, generated options, and automation helpers that repeat collection values or process collections at scale must load the collection-standards skill.
  • CLI command modules should be nearly logicless: parse input, call one service or use-case, format output, and convert expected errors to user-safe messages. Business rules, workflow policy, persistence, retries, batching, and duplicated registries belong outside command modules.

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 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 · 72 lines · 1,267 tokens per session scan A 9d774d70cd61

Subscribe to this mod's changes

development-engineering is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository jterratsdev/ableton-live-mcp (0 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,267 tokens to every session, about $0.0063 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.