hard-cut

A rule set for completely removing a software feature, including its code, callers, tests, documentation, and configuration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a feature must be permanently removed and you need to find and clean up every part of the codebase that refers to it.
Why use it?
It prevents deleted behavior from lingering as unused code, compatibility workarounds, placeholder errors, or misleading documentation.

Cursor rule for Codex

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/udecode/plate-template/hard-cut
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/udecode/plate-template

Made for: Codex.

Per session 64 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 391 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 $0.00064 $0.00391
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00196
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00078
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00039

Measured 2d ago against content hash a0bd692db25c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hard-cut 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 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to hard-cut — 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.

.agents/rules/hard-cut.mdc · 56 lines

What it actually says

Hard Cut

Use this when a feature should die, not linger.

Rules

  • Delete the surface. Do not deprecate it.
  • Do not leave throw new Error("Not implemented"), placeholder notices, "feature removed" banners, or TODOs about bringing it back unless the user explicitly asks.
  • Do not keep compatibility aliases, deprecated shims, fallback parsing, migration bridges, or dead exports.
  • Delete tests for deleted behavior. Keep tests only for the behavior that still exists.
  • Delete comments that describe deleted code or mourn the old feature.
  • If removal exposes adjacent dead code, keep cutting until the graph is clean.

Sweep

  1. Find the real surface area:
    • exports
    • commands and flags
    • routes
    • UI entrypoints
    • feature flags
    • docs and examples
  2. Trace references with rg.
  3. Delete the implementation and the glue:
    • call sites
    • types
    • state
    • tests
    • docs
    • comments
  4. Grep again for the removed name and obvious aliases.
  5. Run the narrowest honest verification for the surviving product.

Smells

  • deprecated notices
  • not-implemented throws
  • stub handlers
  • dead enum or union members
  • permanently-false feature-flag branches
  • unused env vars and config
  • tests that only prove the deleted feature used to exist

Bias

If the choice is between deleting more code and leaving a zombie seam, delete more code.

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 · 56 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A a0bd692db25c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hard-cut is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository udecode/plate-template (59 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 391 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to hard-cut, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

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agent-browser-issue

Open a concise GitHub follow-up for reusable browser-use limitations. Use when browser automation is blocked by a likely tool-side issue that is worth fixing separately, especially for clicks, dropdowns, file inputs, focus traps, or other repeatable agent/browser failures.

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hard-cut

Remove a feature completely with no backward compatibility. Use when the user says "hard cut", "rip it out", "delete it", "unship", "kill this feature", or wants dead code removed instead of deprecated. Delete the surface, callers, tests, docs, comments, fallbacks, and stubs.

udecode/plate-playground-template · 64 tokens