prepare

A preparation checklist for a coding agent before it answers or changes code. It tells the agent to inspect the project’s shared code, data definitions, standards, tools, release process, and design conventions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before answering development tasks in an unfamiliar project, especially when the project has multiple packages, automated checks, or established release practices.
Why use it?
It reduces the chance of duplicated work or changes that conflict with the existing codebase and delivery process.

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/zackiles/deno-kit/prepare
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zackiles/deno-kit

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 1,198 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 $0.00000 $0.01198
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00599
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00240
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00120

Measured yesterday against content hash e1e9ccbc7cb1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prepare 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to prepare — 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.

.cursor/rules/prepare.mdc · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Steps to Take Before Reasoning

Immediately before you start reasoning about the human’s prompt, perform the following research steps to gather broad context. Collect any information relevant to the prompt or that would help execute on it effectively:

  1. Search all packages for shared libraries, utilities, and patterns
    • Note what can be reused to avoid redundancy.
  2. Find and note any schemas, models, types, constants, or configuration files
    • Collect relevant structured data critical to the function of the codebase and application.
  3. Locate coding standards and practices
    • Identify conventions you must follow for naming, file structure, code formatting, etc.
  4. Identify existing tooling, scripts, and workflows
    • Note any automated processes or frameworks already in place.
  5. Review overarching CI/CD pipelines and deployment models
    • Ensure your contributions align with established build, test, and release processes.
  6. Check existing versioning and release management practices
    • Understand how changes are documented, tagged, and published.
  7. Assess design patterns, syntax preferences, or stylistic approaches
    • Confirm you are imitating the prevailing style unless it is severely flawed.

Use these findings to maintain consistency and preserve the codebase’s cohesiveness.


Rules for Prepping When Proposing a Solution

  1. Recall the Research Objective

    • Your proposal must fit seamlessly into the existing architecture, leveraging documented patterns and standards.
  2. Incorporate Research Findings

    • Reuse any shared libraries or utilities discovered in the “Steps to Take Before Reasoning.”
    • Respect existing schemas, models, constants, or configurations to avoid conflicts and duplication.
    • Align your proposal with established coding and deployment standards so it can pass automated checks.
  3. Draft a High-Level Plan

    • Provide a concise outline of how the solution should work.
    • Highlight any significant performance, security, or maintainability considerations.
    • Call out dependencies, tools, or frameworks that will be involved.

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 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 · 103 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A e1e9ccbc7cb1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prepare is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository zackiles/deno-kit (3 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,198 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to prepare, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.