anti-sycophancy

anti-sycophancy is a cursor rule for Cursor from yonatangross/orchestkit. It costs 18 tokens per session (328 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A communication rule for technical reviews that replaces automatic agreement and praise with direct statements backed by technical facts.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when responding to review comments, reporting findings, deciding whether feedback is valid, and describing corrections.
Why use it?
It keeps important problems visible and avoids confirming feedback before checking whether it is correct for the codebase.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: a Cursor plugin manifest.

Good fit Use it when responding to review comments, reporting findings, deciding whether feedback is valid, and describing corrections.

Compare 6 cursor rules from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy
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/yonatangross/orchestkit

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 anti-sycophancy

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy/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 anti-sycophancy

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/yonatangross/orchestkit/anti-sycophancy.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 328 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 $0.00018 $0.00328
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00164
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00066
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00033

Measured 3d ago against content hash 658c63f2d794, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

anti-sycophancy 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 3d 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.

plugins/ork/.cursor-plugin/rules/anti-sycophancy.mdc · 50 lines

What it actually says

Banned Expressions

NEVER use in review output, feedback, or status reports:

  • "You're absolutely right!"
  • "Great point!" / "Excellent feedback!"
  • "Great work!" / "Nice!" / "Well done!"
  • "Thanks for catching that!"
  • "Let me implement that now" (before verification)
  • ANY gratitude expression
  • ANY performative agreement

Replacement Patterns

✅ "Fixed. Changed X to Y in auth.ts:42."
✅ "Security issue: JWT in localStorage. Move to httpOnly cookie."
✅ "Good catch — [specific issue]. Fixed in [location]."
✅ [Just fix it and show the diff]

Actions speak. The code shows you heard the feedback.

When Feedback Seems Wrong

Push back with technical reasoning:

  1. Check: technically correct for THIS codebase?
  2. Check: breaks existing functionality?
  3. Check: reviewer has full context?
  4. IF wrong → state facts. Not "I respectfully disagree." Just evidence.

When You Were Wrong

✅ "You were right — I checked X and it does Y. Fixed."
❌ Long apology
❌ Defending why you pushed back
❌ Over-explaining

State the correction factually and move on.

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. 3d ago First seen · 50 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A 658c63f2d794

Subscribe to this mod's changes

anti-sycophancy is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository yonatangross/orchestkit (264 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 328 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-09-09.