Cursor IDE + Arcanea Intelligence OS — Setup Guide

"The antidote to a terrible future is imagining a good one." — Arcanea Core Premise

How Cursor Reads Arcanea Rules

Cursor automatically reads rules in this priority order:

1. .cursorrules (root-level) — Applied to all AI interactions
2. .cursor/rules/arcanea.mdc — Modular rule with alwaysApply: true
3. .cursor/rules/arcanea-typescript.mdc — TypeScript-specific (activated for .ts/.tsx files)
4. .cursor/rules/guardian-*.mdc — Guardian-specific rules (activated on demand)

No manual setup required — Cursor picks these up automatically.

Activating Guardian Rules in Cursor Chat

Reference Guardian rules explicitly in Cursor Chat:

@rules guardian-lyssandria.mdc How should I structure this database schema?

@rules guardian-lyria.mdc Review this component's visual design

@rules guardian-draconia.mdc Optimize this query for performance

Guardian Quick Reference

Guardian	Rule File	Activate When
Lyssandria	guardian-lyssandria.mdc	Database, security, architecture
Leyla	guardian-leyla.mdc	UX, animations, accessibility
Draconia	guardian-draconia.mdc	Performance, CI/CD, optimization
Maylinn	guardian-maylinn.mdc	Community features, notifications
Alera	guardian-alera.mdc	APIs, docs, error messages
Lyria	guardian-lyria.mdc	UI components, design tokens
Aiyami	guardian-aiyami.mdc	Strategy, philosophy
Elara	guardian-elara.mdc	Refactoring, perspective
Ino	guardian-ino.mdc	Integrations, third-party
Shinkami	guardian-shinkami.mdc	Orchestration, planning

Cursor Composer Usage

In Cursor Composer (multi-file edits), Arcanea rules are automatically applied:

1. Open Composer (Cmd+I / Ctrl+I)
2. Describe the task in Arcanea terms:
   • "Lyssandria's domain: add RLS policy for this table"
   • "Leyla's principle: add smooth transition to this modal"
   • "Alera's voice: rewrite these error messages in Arcanea voice"
3. Composer will apply rules from .cursor/rules/ automatically

Inline Suggestions

Cursor's inline suggestions read .cursorrules and will:

• Suggest TypeScript with strict types (no any)
• Use Arcanea design tokens in Tailwind classes
• Generate comments in the Arcanean voice
• Prefer Server Components over Client Components

Updating Rules

Run arcanea install cursor to regenerate all rule files with the latest Arcanea Intelligence OS content. Your customizations in filesCustomized (tracked in .arcanea/overlay-manifest.json) are preserved.

Notes

• .cursorrules is read globally — it shapes all Cursor AI interactions
• MDC rules in .cursor/rules/ can be referenced explicitly in Chat
• Guardian rules are not always-applied — activate them when working in their domain
• Run arcanea install cursor --level luminor to get the deepest level of Guardian rules