back-to-basics

back-to-basics is a cursor rule for Cursor from shijiew/back-to-basics-skills. It costs 33 tokens per session (90 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of design rules for building and reviewing agent systems, which are software systems that perform tasks with an AI model. Its central idea is to reduce unnecessary complexity and dependencies.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when architecting, implementing, or reviewing an agent system, its supporting harness, or an automated pipeline.
Why use it?
It helps identify parts that add disorder without being needed for the task, keeping long-running automated systems easier to reason about.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: installed under .cursor/.

Good fit Use it when architecting, implementing, or reviewing an agent system, its supporting harness, or an automated pipeline.

Compare 6 cursor rules from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics
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/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills

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 back-to-basics

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for back-to-basics

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/shijiew/back-to-basics-skills/back-to-basics.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 90 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 $0.00033 $0.00090
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00045
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00018
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00009

Measured 9d ago against content hash c13992ea7b5a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

back-to-basics 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 9d 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/back-to-basics.mdc · 13 lines

What it actually says

Entropy

Agent system design is the art of reducing system entropy.

Add a part only when its absence provably blocks the task; usefulness is not necessity.

Every dependency imports its own disorder; the standard library is the lowest-entropy dependency.

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. 9d ago First seen · 13 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A c13992ea7b5a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

back-to-basics is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository shijiew/back-to-basics-skills (3 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 90 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 2026-08-31.