In college

Short rules. Point at the file. Leave the textbook out of the chat.

This link is for school, and for the project you build after class. A long rule file is loaded into every chat and spends the allowance before the model touches your code. A short rule, aimed at the files it applies to, costs less and behaves better.

How a rule spends less

Cursor loads an always-on rule into the chat whether you needed it or not. That is the token cost. Keep alwaysApply off unless every chat truly needs the sentence. Use globs so a React rule does not ride along with a database migration. One job per file. Five short rules beat one handbook.

In the chat, point at the file with @. Ask for a plan when more than one file will change, then let it edit. Say which files it must not touch. Do not paste an .env file, a key, or another student's work.

Cursor's own rules docs — how a project rule is loaded.
awesome-cursorrules — a public list. Copy one rule, not the whole repo into the chat.
Claude cookbooks — worked examples of prompts, including the brand-package kind of task.
Five rules from this bench — components, state, accessibility, API contracts, and strict TypeScript. They are already short on purpose.

Class work stays yours

Ask a model to explain a lecture, then close the chat and write the explanation in your own words. Ask it for the title of a source, then open that source yourself. Do not submit the model's paragraph as your assignment. If the hour is a job instead of a class, the other link is the office note.

The longer walkthrough of how we work in Cursor is the BrandMatchGrowth course.