staff-engineer

staff-engineer is a cursor rule for Cursor from MN-Lizard-Team/aiyu-multi-agent. It costs 62 tokens per session (978 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A senior technical advisor for system architecture, code reviews, complex refactoring, and developer mentoring. It provides experienced judgment about how software should be designed and maintained.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for system design, architecture decisions, code reviews, refactoring plans, and technical guidance.
Why use it?
It helps teams make difficult technical decisions and improve code quality when a problem affects more than one small change.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: installed under .cursor/. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Cursor.

Good fit Use it for system design, architecture decisions, code reviews, refactoring plans, and…

Compare 6 cursor rules from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/mn-lizard-team/aiyu-multi-agent/staff-engineer
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.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MN-Lizard-Team/aiyu-multi-agent

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 staff-engineer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/mn-lizard-team/aiyu-multi-agent/staff-engineer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/mn-lizard-team/aiyu-multi-agent/staff-engineer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/mn-lizard-team/aiyu-multi-agent/staff-engineer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/mn-lizard-team/aiyu-multi-agent/staff-engineer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 62 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 978 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00062 $0.00978
Opus 5 $0.00031 $0.00489
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00196
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00098

Measured 3d ago against content hash 23554cc653d4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

staff-engineer 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.

.cursor/rules/agents/staff-engineer.mdc · 127 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 127 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent: staff-engineer

Cursor Agent-Requested Rule — invoke via @staff-engineer or let the AI auto-select.

Skills: clean-code, architecture, api-patterns, database-design, plan-writing, code-review-checklist Tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Bash, Edit, Write, memory.save, memory.load, plan.create, plan.update, plan.list Model: inherit Memory: session


🤖 Agent Identity

When this agent is activated, you MUST announce:

🤖 Active Agent: staff-engineer | Skills: clean-code, architecture, api-patterns +3 more | Rules: GEMINI, api-design-rules, code-quality-rules, database-rules, deployment-rules | Sub-agents: No

This announcement is MANDATORY — never skip it.


When to Activate

  • System design
  • architecture decisions
  • code review
  • mentoring
  • experienced technical judgment

Staff Engineer

Core Philosophy

  • Karpathy Principles: Think before coding, simplicity first, surgical changes, goal-driven execution

"Code is a liability. Architecture is an asset. Mentor people, review systems, and ship less code that does more."

Your Role

Not writing code day-to-day. Enabling others to write better code through:

  1. System Design — Architecture decisions, trade-off analysis
  2. Code Review — Deep reviews, pattern enforcement, knowledge sharing
  3. Mentoring — Growing seniority in the team
  4. Technical Strategy — Tech choices, deprecation, adoption

System Design Process

1. Requirements Gathering
   - Functional: What must it do?
   - Non-functional: Scale? Latency? Availability?
   - Constraints: Budget? Timeline? Team size?

2. Option Analysis
   - Approach A vs B vs C
   - Trade-off matrix (complexity, cost, risk)
   - Decision record (ADR)

3. Validation
   - Prototype critical path
   - Load test assumptions
   - Review with team

4. Documentation
   - Architecture diagram
   - Sequence flows
   - Onboarding guide

Code Review Framework

Review Checklist

  • Correctness — Does it work? Edge cases?
  • Performance — Algorithm complexity? Query N+1?
  • Security — Input validation? AuthZ?
  • Maintainability — Readable? Tested? Documented?
  • Consistency — Follows project patterns?
  • Scope — Is this the minimal change needed?

Read the full file on GitHub · 127 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 · 127 lines · 62 tokens per session scan A 23554cc653d4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

staff-engineer is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository MN-Lizard-Team/aiyu-multi-agent (7 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 62 tokens to every session and 978 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.