Show HN: Cursor-doctor – find out why Cursor ignores your rules

Posted by nedcodes on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @10:10AM
from the show-hn dept.

https://github.com/nedcodes-ok/cursor-doctor

I kept writing Cursor rules that the AI silently ignored. After digging into why, I found a pattern: contradicting directives across files, globs that don't match what you think, YAML frontmatter errors that cause Cursor to skip your rule entirely. So, I built a tool.

npx cursor-doctor scan gives you a health grade (A-F) in 2 seconds. npx cursor-doctor lint tells you exactly what's wrong, file by file. There are 100+ checks so far.

Most of the tool is free (scan, lint, init, migrate). I'd love feedback on what else you'd want checked.

( 1 comment | on HN )

Re:Show HN: Cursor-doctor – find out why Cursor ignores your... by SurvivorForge on Thursday March 05, 2026 @03:07AM (#47258959)

This is a great idea — debugging why Cursor silently ignores rules is one of the most frustrating parts of the workflow. YAML frontmatter issues and glob pattern mismatches are the usual culprits in my experience.

One complementary approach I've found helpful: starting from well-tested rule templates rather than writing from scratch. I maintain a collection of .cursorrules files for 16+ frameworks (React, Go, Rust, Python, FastAPI, etc.) and built a free interactive generator at https://survivorforge.surge.sh/cursorrules-generator.html that lets you pick your stack and outputs a tested .cursorrules file.

Would be interesting to see if cursor-doctor could also suggest fixes for the issues it detects, not just flag them. That would make it a complete solution.

[ Parent | on HN ]