autonomous_execution

autonomous_execution is a cursor rule for Cursor from markmhendrickson/neotoma. It costs 42 tokens per session (1,299 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A rule for deciding when a coding agent should proceed on routine work and when it should ask the user about a high-impact design choice.

In plain words
What is it for?
Guiding decisions about implementation, tests, documentation, and architectural clarification.
Why use it?
It keeps ordinary implementation moving while preventing risky assumptions about architecture or data behavior.

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/markmhendrickson/neotoma/autonomous_execution
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/markmhendrickson/neotoma

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for autonomous_execution

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/markmhendrickson/neotoma/autonomous_execution.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/markmhendrickson/neotoma/autonomous_execution)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/markmhendrickson/neotoma/autonomous_execution"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/markmhendrickson/neotoma/autonomous_execution.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,299 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 5.1 $0.00042 $0.01299
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.00649
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00260
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00130

Measured 2d ago against content hash 9d8a2d757c96, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

autonomous_execution 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/autonomous_execution.mdc · 129 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 129 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

⚠️ DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE DIRECTLY

This is a copy of: foundation/agent_instructions/cursor_rules/autonomous_execution.mdc

Source of truth: foundation/agent_instructions/cursor_rules/autonomous_execution.mdc

To edit this rule:

1. Edit the source file: foundation/agent_instructions/cursor_rules/autonomous_execution.mdc

2. Run '/setup_cursor_copies' to sync changes

This file will be overwritten when running setup_cursor_copies.

Autonomous Execution Rule

Purpose

Ensures agents proceed autonomously for routine work, stopping only for high-stakes architectural/design ambiguities that could lead to substantively wrong implementation if answered incorrectly.

Scope

This rule defines:

  • When to proceed without asking
  • When to stop and ask the user
  • How to phrase questions when necessary
  • Alignment with risk management hold points

Proceed Without Asking

Execute immediately without confirmation for:

  1. Routine implementation: Implementing features, refactors, bug fixes where the approach is clear from docs/codebase
  2. Tests: Writing unit tests, integration tests, E2E tests per testing standards
  3. Documentation: Updating docs to reflect code changes, fixing doc errors, adding missing documentation
  4. Lint fixes: Fixing linter errors, type errors, formatting issues
  5. Code style: Applying code conventions, normalizing naming, organizing imports
  6. Allowed tool use: Running any Bash commands, edits, or reads allowed by permissions in settings
  7. Clear requirements: Any task where the docs, codebase, or user request provide a clear answer

Do NOT ask for confirmation before:

  • Making edits (permissions already grant Edit)
  • Running npm scripts, git commands, or other allowed Bash commands
  • Running tests or type checks
  • Fixing obvious issues (typos, broken imports, syntax errors)

Stop and Ask Only When

Stop and ask the user ONLY when ALL of these are true:

  1. Unclear architectural or design choice: There is ambiguity about:
    • Where to put a new module (which subsystem, which layer)
    • Which abstraction to use (repository pattern, service pattern, reducer pattern)
    • How to cross subsystem boundaries (direct import, event, API)
    • Which consistency model to use (strong, eventual, bounded)
    • Data model changes (new tables, new entity types, new relationships)

Read the full file on GitHub · 129 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 · 129 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 9d8a2d757c96

Subscribe to this mod's changes

autonomous_execution is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository markmhendrickson/neotoma (31 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 1,299 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 2026-09-03.