SolarAlarm · Free PDF

Your Cursor rules are on disk. The agent still ignores them.

Free short PDF: the silent non-loading traps (missing frontmatter, bad globs, alwaysApply overload, stale chats) — and the 2-minute checks that prove whether anything actually loaded.

Not another mega-prompt pack.

You wrote Project Rules. You dropped SKILL.md files in the right folders. The agent still force-pushes, essays you to death, or can't name a single active rule when you ask.

That's usually silent non-loading, not "bad prompting."

This free PDF walks the failure modes Cursor power users hit most:

Missing or empty description in YAML frontmatter
Globs that never match the files you edit
Too many alwaysApply: true rules crowding each other out
Wrong path / wrong extension
Fixing the file but keeping a stale agent chat

Plus a simple verify: ask the agent what rules are active. If it can't list them, they're decoration.

What you get

A plain-language map of why rules sit dead on disk
A trap checklist you can run in under two minutes
The alwaysApply budget rule of thumb (2–3, not ten)
What to do instead of pasting the whole rule into chat forever

What you won't get

50 ChatGPT prompts
An MCP course
A sales webinar funnel

When you're ready for a full reliability kit — production .mdc rules, skills (including a load diagnostic), setup guide, and a Grok Bot chapter — that's Agent Setup That Works. We'll mention it later. This PDF stands alone.