creative-phase-guidelines

creative-phase-guidelines is a cursor rule for Cursor from savagelysubtle/BIG-BRAIN-Memory-Bank. It costs 1,250 tokens per session, scanned A, a copy of creative-phase-guidelines, MIT.

A structured thinking guide for difficult design and problem-solving work before implementation.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps handle sequential decisions, architecture choices, costly-to-change designs, and tasks with policy constraints. It also defines markers for entering and leaving a creative phase.
Why use it?
It gives complex decisions explicit phases, checkpoints, alternatives, trade-offs, and verification instead of leaving the reasoning implicit.

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/savagelysubtle/big-brain-memory-bank/creative-phase-guidelines
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/savagelysubtle/BIG-BRAIN-Memory-Bank

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 creative-phase-guidelines

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/savagelysubtle/big-brain-memory-bank/creative-phase-guidelines.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/savagelysubtle/big-brain-memory-bank/creative-phase-guidelines)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/savagelysubtle/big-brain-memory-bank/creative-phase-guidelines"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/savagelysubtle/big-brain-memory-bank/creative-phase-guidelines.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 1,250 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,250 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.01250 $0.01250
Opus 5 $0.00625 $0.00625
Sonnet 5 $0.00250 $0.00250
Haiku 4.5 $0.00125 $0.00125

Measured 5d ago against content hash 4010eab2a563, 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-guidelines 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 5d 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

This is a copy

100% identical to creative-phase-guidelines — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

inspiration/related-implementations/Vanzan-memory-bank/.cursor/rules/Core Implementation/creative-phase-guidelines.mdc · 179 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 179 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

🎨 ENHANCED CREATIVE PHASE HANDLING

TL;DR: Use creative phases as dedicated thinking spaces for complex problem-solving. Apply structured thinking with explicit verification steps, especially for Level 3-4 tasks. Include regular checkpoints, analyze options systematically, and provide comprehensive summaries when exiting. Creative phase handling scales with task complexity.

🎨 CREATIVE PHASE AS STRUCTURED THINKING SPACE

Creative phases serve as dedicated thinking spaces for complex problem-solving, similar to the "think" tool approach. They're most valuable for:

  • Sequential decision making where each step builds on previous ones
  • Complex design choices with multiple trade-offs
  • Scenarios where mistakes would be costly to fix later
  • Tasks requiring policy adherence or constraint verification

🎨 CREATIVE PHASE MARKERS

For maximum visibility, use these prominent markers:

🎨🎨🎨 ENTERING CREATIVE PHASE: [DESIGN/ALGORITHM/ARCHITECTURE] 🎨🎨🎨
[Creative work happens here]
🎨🎨🎨 EXITING CREATIVE PHASE - RETURNING TO TASK TRACKING 🎨🎨🎨

Always include a creative phase summary when exiting:

🔄 CREATIVE PHASE SUMMARY:
- Completed: [Brief description of creative work]
- Key decisions: [Important decisions made]
- Next steps: [Follow-up implementation tasks]
- Documentation: [Where decisions were documented]
- Verification: [Confirmation that solution meets requirements and constraints]

🎨 CREATIVE PHASE STRUCTURE

1. Starting a Creative Phase

When entering a creative phase, clearly define:

🎨🎨🎨 ENTERING CREATIVE PHASE: [TYPE] 🎨🎨🎨
Focus: [Specific focus area]
Objective: [What you aim to accomplish]
Constraints: [Any constraints to consider]

[Initial exploration of the problem space]

2. During a Creative Phase

For extended creative work, use periodic checkpoints that incorporate structured thinking:

🎨 CREATIVE CHECKPOINT: [Milestone reached]
- Progress: [Brief progress description]
- Decisions made:
  - [Decision 1]
  - [Decision 2]
- Verification:
  - [Verify solution addresses requirements]
  - [Verify compliance with constraints]
  - [Verify consistency with existing system]
- Open questions:
  - [Question 1]
  - [Question 2]
- Next creative milestone: [Description]

Read the full file on GitHub · 179 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. 5d ago First seen · 179 lines · 1,250 tokens per session scan A 4010eab2a563

Subscribe to this mod's changes

creative-phase-guidelines is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository savagelysubtle/BIG-BRAIN-Memory-Bank (5 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,250 tokens to every session, about $0.0063 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to creative-phase-guidelines, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.