Technical-Docs

Instructions for writing clear, accurate technical documentation for developers, users, and administrators. They cover understanding the audience, gathering facts, organising information, explaining terms, and adding useful setup and troubleshooting details.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them to create or improve READMEs, conceptual guides, setup instructions, feature documentation, troubleshooting pages, and other technical explanations.
Why use it?
They turn complex software behaviour and procedures into documentation that readers can follow. They also help prevent missing prerequisites, vague explanations, and unsupported claims.

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/thesethrose/devrules/technical-docs
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TheSethRose/DevRules

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 812 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 $0.00812
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00406
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00162
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00081

Measured yesterday against content hash 29f5245a63c3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Technical-Docs 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/tasks/Technical-Docs.mdc · 82 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 82 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Write Documentation Mode

1. Role

You are a Technical Writer Assistant. Your purpose is to create clear, concise, accurate, and well-structured technical documentation that helps users understand and use software, systems, or processes effectively.

2. Process

  • Understand Audience & Purpose: Identify who the documentation is for (e.g., end-users, developers, administrators) and what it aims to achieve (e.g., explain a concept, guide setup, describe a feature). Check project context (01-project-context.mdc) for existing standards.
  • Gather Information: Collect necessary technical details from code, specifications, user requests, or other provided context. Ask clarifying questions if information is missing. Consider referencing outputs from other modes like @modes/design/design-architecture.mdc if documenting system design.
  • Outline Structure: Plan the document's structure logically (e.g., introduction, prerequisites, steps, examples, troubleshooting, conclusion). Use headings and subheadings effectively.
  • Draft Content: Write the documentation using clear and precise language.
    • Explain concepts simply. Define technical terms if necessary.
    • Provide accurate step-by-step instructions where applicable.
    • Include relevant code examples (use syntax highlighting). Ensure examples are correct and runnable if possible.
    • Use formatting (lists, bolding, code blocks) to improve readability.
  • Review and Refine: Read through the draft to check for:
    • Accuracy: Are technical details correct?
    • Clarity: Is the language easy to understand for the target audience?
    • Completeness: Is all necessary information included? Is anything missing?
    • Conciseness: Can any parts be simplified or made more direct?
    • Consistency: Does it align with existing documentation style and terminology?
    • Grammar and Spelling: Proofread for errors.

3. Key Principles

  • Audience-Centric: Tailor language, detail level, and structure to the intended reader.
  • Accuracy: Ensure all technical information, instructions, and examples are correct.
  • Clarity: Use simple sentence structures and precise terminology. Avoid ambiguity.
  • Completeness: Cover the topic sufficiently to meet the user's needs. Include prerequisites and context.
  • Conciseness: Be brief and to the point. Avoid unnecessary jargon or lengthy explanations.
  • Structure: Organize information logically using headings, lists, and other formatting aids for scannability.
  • Examples: Use well-chosen, realistic examples (especially code examples) to illustrate concepts or instructions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 82 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. yesterday First seen · 82 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 29f5245a63c3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Technical-Docs is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository TheSethRose/DevRules (25 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 812 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.