This is a great idea — debugging why Cursor silently ignores rules is one of the most frustrating parts of the workflow. YAML frontmatter issues and glob pattern mismatches are the usual culprits in my experience.
One complementary approach I've found helpful: starting from well-tested rule templates rather than writing from scratch. I maintain a collection of .cursorrules files for 16+ frameworks (React, Go, Rust, Python, FastAPI, etc.) and built a free interactive generator at https://survivorforge.surge.sh/cursorrules-generator.html that lets you pick your stack and outputs a tested .cursorrules file.
Would be interesting to see if cursor-doctor could also suggest fixes for the issues it detects, not just flag them. That would make it a complete solution.
This is a great idea — debugging why Cursor silently ignores rules is one of the most frustrating parts of the workflow. YAML frontmatter issues and glob pattern mismatches are the usual culprits in my experience.
One complementary approach I've found helpful: starting from well-tested rule templates rather than writing from scratch. I maintain a collection of .cursorrules files for 16+ frameworks (React, Go, Rust, Python, FastAPI, etc.) and built a free interactive generator at https://survivorforge.surge.sh/cursorrules-generator.html that lets you pick your stack and outputs a tested .cursorrules file.
Would be interesting to see if cursor-doctor could also suggest fixes for the issues it detects, not just flag them. That would make it a complete solution.