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cursor.beauty
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5 min read

A map of what to put in front of the model

Rules, skills, prompts, MCP, and cloud agents — pick the right surface.

Cursor is bigger than a chat box. If every problem is “write a better prompt,” you will fight the product. If every problem is “add another tool,” you will ignore the files that change the next edit.

In the editor

  • Rules (.cursor/rules/*.mdc) — constraints the agent should already know: voice, stack, visual craft.
  • Skills (.cursor/skills/*/SKILL.md) — procedures for a job you repeat.
  • Prompts — paste once. Promote when reuse starts.
  • MCP — tools: GitHub, databases, browsers. Useful, and a different job from taste.
  • Plugins — packaged MCP plus rules plus skills. Install them when you need the tools, not as a substitute for a short rule.

Around the editor

  • Cloud agents — run a slice on a remote machine. Brief them with a prompt or skill; do not ask them to “build a platform.”
  • Review bots — product features. We do not wrap them here.

A simple habit

  1. Install a taste pack (Studio stack is the default).
  2. Add only the tools you will actually call this week.
  3. Delete rules that have not changed an edit in a month.