type-system

A set of Rust guidelines for designing safe, meaningful types. It explains patterns such as newtypes, which wrap basic values to represent specific concepts, and validated types.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when modelling domain-specific values, tracking states, designing traits, validating inputs, or representing errors in Rust.
Why use it?
It helps prevent invalid values and confusingly similar data from being mixed together, while moving some mistakes into compile-time checks.

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/tyrchen/cursor-rust-rules/type-system
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tyrchen/cursor-rust-rules

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 3,676 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 $0.03676
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01838
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00735
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00368

Measured 2d ago against content hash b5a0d604791c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

type-system scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories โ€” prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency โ€” 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.

.cursor/rules/rust/core/type-system.mdc ยท 591 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing โ€” 591 lines โ€” stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

๐Ÿ” RUST TYPE SYSTEM BEST PRACTICES

TL;DR: Leverage Rust's powerful type system for safety, performance, and expressiveness through newtype patterns, phantom types, and zero-cost abstractions.

๐Ÿ” TYPE SYSTEM DESIGN STRATEGY

graph TD
    Start["Type Design"] --> DomainCheck{"Domain-Specific<br>Types Needed?"}

    DomainCheck -->|Yes| NewtypePattern["Newtype Pattern"]
    DomainCheck -->|No| PrimitiveCheck{"Primitive<br>Obsession?"}

    NewtypePattern --> StateTracking{"State Tracking<br>Required?"}
    PrimitiveCheck -->|Yes| NewtypePattern
    PrimitiveCheck -->|No| TraitDesign["Trait Design"]

    StateTracking -->|Yes| PhantomTypes["Phantom Types"]
    StateTracking -->|No| ValidatedTypes["Validated Types"]

    PhantomTypes --> CompileTimeCheck["Compile-Time Validation"]
    ValidatedTypes --> RuntimeCheck["Runtime Validation"]

    CompileTimeCheck --> ZeroCost["Zero-Cost Abstractions"]
    RuntimeCheck --> ZeroCost
    TraitDesign --> ZeroCost

    ZeroCost --> ErrorModeling["Error Modeling"]
    ErrorModeling --> SafetyPatterns["Safety Patterns"]
    SafetyPatterns --> Performance["Performance Optimization"]

    style Start fill:#4da6ff,stroke:#0066cc,color:white
    style NewtypePattern fill:#4dbb5f,stroke:#36873f,color:white
    style PhantomTypes fill:#ffa64d,stroke:#cc7a30,color:white
    style ZeroCost fill:#d94dbb,stroke:#a3378a,color:white

๐ŸŽฏ TYPE SAFETY PRINCIPLES

Newtype Pattern for Domain Modeling

use derive_more::{Constructor, Display, From, Into};
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};
use std::fmt;

// โœ… Strong typing for domain concepts
#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, Hash, Serialize, Deserialize, Constructor, Display, From, Into)]
pub struct UserId(uuid::Uuid);

#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, Hash, Serialize, Deserialize, Constructor, Display, From, Into)]
pub struct ProductId(uuid::Uuid);

#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, Hash, Serialize, Deserialize, Constructor, Display, From, Into)]
pub struct OrderId(uuid::Uuid);

// โœ… Prevents mixing up IDs at compile time
fn process_order(user_id: UserId, product_id: ProductId) -> OrderId {
    // Compiler prevents: process_order(product_id, user_id)
    OrderId(uuid::Uuid::new_v4())
}

// โŒ Weak typing - prone to errors
// fn process_order(user_id: String, product_id: String) -> String

Read the full file on GitHub ยท 591 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. 2d ago First seen ยท 591 lines ยท 0 tokens per session scan A b5a0d604791c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

type-system is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository tyrchen/cursor-rust-rules (27 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 3,676 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.