Cursor

Install the Serpentine rule and wire structural orientation into every Cursor session.

Serpentine integrates with Cursor via its rules system. Running serpentine init installs a rule file that instructs Cursor to use Serpentine’s CLI instead of reading files or grepping — running stats, catalog, and analyze to get source code and structural context in a single token-efficient pass.

Setup

In any project you want to instrument:

serpentine init

If .cursor/ is present, it’s detected automatically. You can also target Cursor explicitly:

serpentine init --harness cursor

What gets installed

.cursor/rules/serpentine.mdc

A Cursor rule file with alwaysApply: true, which means Cursor applies it automatically on every task — no slash command needed. The rule instructs Cursor to use three commands:

  1. serpentine stats . — get the module list and scale
  2. serpentine catalog . --filter "*<topic>*" — find nodes relevant to the task
  3. serpentine analyze . --select "+<relevant-area>+" --source — get the subgraph and source

These replace the typical exploratory loop of opening files and grepping.

Updating

After upgrading Serpentine, re-run serpentine init to refresh the rule. Existing files are skipped by default; delete .cursor/rules/serpentine.mdc first if you want to force an update.