task-bootstrap-required

A rule requiring task files to be created or updated before substantial work begins. These files record the task, plan, findings, and verification.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for multi-step research, coding, documentation, verification, external checks, or work outside the current repository.
Why use it?
It creates a durable record of the work instead of leaving important decisions and results only in the chat.

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/rdudov/task-agent/task-bootstrap-required
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rdudov/task-agent

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 187 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 187 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 $0.00187 $0.00187
Opus 5 $0.00093 $0.00093
Sonnet 5 $0.00037 $0.00037
Haiku 4.5 $0.00019 $0.00019

Measured yesterday against content hash 2fc96b8c4913, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

task-bootstrap-required 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.

.cursor/rules/task-bootstrap-required.mdc · 28 lines

What it actually says

Task Bootstrap

For any substantial user request, create or update a task directory under tasks/ before substantive work begins.

Substantial includes:

  • more than one meaningful step
  • research, implementation, verification, or documentation work
  • file, script, config, service, or durable artifact changes
  • live checks against APIs, browsers, SSH, external systems, or runtime services
  • work in another repository or absolute path outside this workspace
  • follow-up work that continues the same non-trivial goal

Skip task creation only when the user explicitly opts out of task artifacts or the request is clearly trivial.

Use:

skills/task-creator/scripts/create_task.sh "Task title" "Short task description"

Chat does not replace task.md, plan.md, findings.md, or verification.md.

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 · 28 lines · 187 tokens per session scan A 2fc96b8c4913

Subscribe to this mod's changes

task-bootstrap-required is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository rdudov/task-agent (4 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 187 tokens to every session, about $0.0009 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.