Feature: Cursor

[rauldiaz]

Note: This harness has not yet been validated against a live Cursor 3.11+ client. The design is based on official Cursor documentation (July 2026) and follows established patterns from the Claude, Kiro, Codex, and opencode harnesses.

Summary

Design specification for the Cursor IDE harness — the sixth AI-DLC distribution target. Defines requirements, architecture, security assessment, and sprint plan for implementing harness/cursor/ and generating dist/cursor/.

Changes

• Requirements (26 total): 13 functional + 13 non-functional requirements with acceptance criteria traced to source documents
• Architecture: System architecture with 6 ADRs (rule format, emitter ownership, hook adapter contract, session init strategy, tier flavor, test numbering). Data flow diagrams for hook lifecycle and build pipeline. Quality score: 96/100.
• Security: STRIDE threat model (10 threats, 12 mitigations, 5 residual threats), security controls mapping, 33 test cases, and implementation guidance
• Project management: 12 user stories across 6 epics in 3 sprints
• Knowledge base: Structured extraction from project documents for downstream consumption

Key architectural decisions:

1. .mdc in named subfolders for rules (per official Cursor docs)
2. emit.ts generates all Cursor-native surfaces (rules, hooks.json, commands, cli.json)
3. Hook adapter maps exit-code-2 → {permission:"deny"} JSON
4. beforeSubmitPrompt for session init (cloud agent compatible)
5. tierFlavor: "claude" (Cursor uses Anthropic model identifiers)
6. Tests at t248 (packaging parity) + t249 (adapter contract)

User experience

Before: AI-DLC supports five platforms (Claude, Kiro, Kiro IDE, Codex, opencode). Cursor IDE users cannot run AI-DLC workflows natively.

After: Users copy dist/cursor/ into their project, invoke /aidlc in Cursor agent mode, and the full 14-agent, 32-stage methodology runs. Utility commands /aidlc-status, /aidlc-jump, /aidlc-scope are available as native Cursor slash commands. Works identically across Cursor IDE, cursor-agent CLI, and cloud agents.

Checklist

• I have reviewed the [contributing guidelines](https://github.com/awslabs/aidlc-workflows/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md)
• I have performed a self-review of this change
• Changes have been tested
• Changes are documented

Test Plan

Test Plan

Design specification only — no runtime code changes in this commit.

1. Verify all internal links in generated/design/README.md resolve to existing files
2. Verify all 6 ADRs have complete rationale, alternatives, and consequences sections
3. Verify requirements traceability: each FR traces to a source quote and maps to at least one user story
4. Once implementation lands: run bun scripts/package.ts --check and bun tests/run-tests.ts --smoke --unit
5. End-to-end validation pending against a live Cursor 3.11+ client (see header note)

Acknowledgment

By submitting this pull request, I confirm that you can use, modify, copy, and redistribute this contribution, under the terms of the [project license](https://github.com/awslabs/aidlc-workflows/blob/main/LICENSE).

[apackeer]

Thanks, Raul. We have chosen PR #661 as the Cursor integration path. Your work on phase-selective rules and native workflow shortcuts informed that implementation, and I credited your design direction in the PR #661 discussion.

This PR also surfaced two areas worth carrying forward: packaging the base Cursor harness for marketplace installation and validating the session lifecycle on Cursor cloud agents. We would welcome your help taking those forward on #661 so we can build them into the selected implementation together.

To keep a single implementation path, I’m closing this PR in favor of #661. Thank you for the design and implementation work that moved Cursor support forward.