rules-best-practices

Rules for writing project guidance files with consistent structure and formatting. They cover frontmatter, headings, bullet points, examples, file references, and keeping guidance concise.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when creating or reviewing rule files, including their descriptions, file patterns, always-applied settings, examples, and references to other guidance files.
Why use it?
They make rules easier for developers and coding agents to find, understand, and apply. They also clarify when rules apply everywhere or only to matching files.

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/ranyitz/aicm/rules-best-practices
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ranyitz/aicm
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 264 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 $0.00000 $0.00264
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00132
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00053
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00026

Measured 2d ago against content hash 67aa2cd56967, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

rules-best-practices 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.

rules/rules-best-practices.mdc · 47 lines

What it actually says

Rule Structure

---
description: Clear, one-line description
globs:  # Empty for alwaysApply: true, glob pattern for alwaysApply: false
alwaysApply: boolean
---

## Main Points as headers
  - Sub-points with specifics

Frontmatter Guidelines

  • alwaysApply: true requires empty globs key
    • Use alwaysApply: true with globs: (no value) for rules that apply to entire codebase
    • Use alwaysApply: false with globs: **/*.ts for rules targeting specific file types/paths

File References

  • Rules or Code: @rules/filename.mdc

Code Examples

// ✅ DO: Good pattern
const correct = true;

// ❌ DON'T: Anti-pattern
const incorrect = false;

Guidelines

  • Start with overview, then specifics
  • Write concisely - include only what's necessary
  • Use bullet points
  • Include both DO/DON'T examples
  • Reference existing code
  • Do not repeat yourself by cross-referencing other rule file
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 · 47 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 67aa2cd56967

Subscribe to this mod's changes

rules-best-practices is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository ranyitz/aicm (36 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 264 tokens. 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 2026-08-30.