creative-phase-triggers

Guidance for recognizing when a coding task needs deliberate exploration of multiple ideas before implementation. It covers situations such as competing design choices, complex algorithms, and architecture planning.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for exploring alternative algorithms, data structures, designs, and architecture choices before selecting an approach.
Why use it?
It gives the agent a way to pause and compare trade-offs when there is no obvious single solution.

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/kfnzero/mantis-mcp-server/creative-phase-triggers
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kfnzero/mantis-mcp-server

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 1,425 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,425 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 $0.01425 $0.01425
Opus 5 $0.00713 $0.00713
Sonnet 5 $0.00285 $0.00285
Haiku 4.5 $0.00143 $0.00143

Measured 3d ago against content hash 8ad354600362, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

creative-phase-triggers 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 3d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

.cursor/rules/Core Implementation/creative-phase-triggers.mdc · 187 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 187 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CREATIVE PHASE TRIGGERS & TRANSITIONS

TL;DR: Recognize when a task requires dedicated creative thinking and explicitly enter a creative phase. This document explains how to identify creative phase triggers, how to transition into/out of creative phases, and how to select the appropriate creative phase type based on the problem.

🔍 WHEN TO ENTER A CREATIVE PHASE

Enter a creative phase whenever you encounter:

  1. Multiple viable approaches to solving a problem with significant trade-offs
  2. Complex design decisions that require systematic analysis
  3. Problems with competing constraints that need careful balancing
  4. Tasks requiring exploration of multiple options before implementation
  5. Situations where decisions have far-reaching consequences
  6. Architecture or algorithm planning that impacts multiple components

Specific Triggers by Domain

Algorithm Design Triggers
  • Implementing a complex algorithm with performance constraints
  • Designing data structures for specialized use cases
  • Working with tree, graph, or dynamic programming problems
  • Optimizing existing algorithms with specific constraints
  • Creating new computational approaches
UI/UX Design Triggers
  • Designing layouts with complex information hierarchy
  • Creating component structures with extensive state management
  • Designing responsive interfaces with complex constraints
  • Planning complex user flows
  • Addressing accessibility and usability challenges
Architecture Planning Triggers
  • Designing service boundaries and communication patterns
  • Creating data storage and access strategies
  • Planning security and authentication systems
  • Designing for scalability and resilience
  • Creating deployment and infrastructure models

🚨 MANDATORY CREATIVE PHASES FOR LEVEL 3-4 TASKS

Creative phases are NOT optional for Level 3-4 tasks. They MUST be used for:

  1. All component architecture decisions in Level 3-4 tasks
  2. All state management approaches in Level 3-4 tasks
  3. All UI/UX design decisions affecting multiple components
  4. All data modeling decisions with system-wide implications
  5. Any algorithm implementation with performance or scalability requirements

Read the full file on GitHub · 187 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. 3d ago First seen · 187 lines · 1,425 tokens per session scan A 8ad354600362

Subscribe to this mod's changes

creative-phase-triggers is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository kfnzero/mantis-mcp-server (10 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,425 tokens to every session, about $0.0071 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.