Secret To Getting AI To Code Like Experts
Let's learn how to use Cursor AI📅 2025-11-13
Transcript
[00:00] How do we make cursor AI create code outputs that are as good as a senior level engineer? If you're following me on this series and a lot of people have been asking, how did you make such a good front end that's so intuitive, Corbin? With easy login pages, sign up pages, the entire studio functionally works with all the different versions, adding projects. Furthermore, we go to the settings looks absolutely beautiful. Tab, tab, tab, tab, tab. How'd you do this? Well, you're in luck. I'm going to show you exactly how I did this. And by the end of this video, you are going to upgrade your cursor AI with a simple block of text. You ready? Let's jump in.
[00:31] Welcome back, y'all. I'm going to show you how you can upgrade your underlying IDE you use. Now, a lot of different app builders such as Replet, Windsurf, VS Code, they have the ability to do this as well, but I'll be showing it in cursor. Now, specifically, what you need to understand is that every single time we start a new chat here, we are going to be shooting in the blank if you don't add what I'm about to show you. as every single model its context is going to be just whatever you have in your underlying repository or in other words what you have in the code files over here. What you need to do first is you need to go to your settings. In your
[01:02] settings you'll typically notice something called rules, memories, and commands. I'm going to be doing a whole another video on why we use user rules and what specifically you should be using in your user rules. But in this video, I want to go over project rules because I can almost guarantee you right now you're not using them cuz you're thinking to yourself, h they're probably not that important. Oh, they're important. Very important. So, first off, let me show you where you can get these kind of rules that will really upgrade your code. And before I show you where this suggestion came from, our school community here. It's completely free. It's the third link in the description. Just click it. It's absolutely free. Join it. And this suggestion came from Jeff here who pointed out in the community that this
[01:32] even existed. I had no clue. This is super cool. Y I'll leave this in the description down below. You can use this for any of the builders you use. What this is is preset rules and project rules we can leverage. So, for example, front-end developer. If I click this, look at this. What this is doing is that this is making it so that when we use our IDE or app builder, we are making sure that the model will follow by very fundamental rules that every developer should use if they're more experienced. Now, I'm not saying this rule right here is absolutely perfect. I'm not saying
[02:04] it's 100% pass my little test. What I'm telling you is that using this kind of rule comparative to just having no rule, you're going to have better code. Now, let me show you how you would modify a rule like this so it actually applies to your specific app. Because if you didn't know, which you probably already do know, but every single app is different. And because they're different, that means whatever your end value points, whatever you're trying to sell, whatever your tech stack is, the way you approach being a quote unquote senior engineer in that context is going to be different than the person that's building with an entirely different tech stack. This is
[02:35] very obvious. So a clear example of this is that if you're developing a video game or you're developing an augmented reality game, your tech stack, your front-end engineer or your senior engineer equivalent is going to have a way different directions of how to approach that text stack comparative to if you're building a software like Thumbio, which is React and TypeScript. So how do we do that? Well, first off, you go to a directory like this. And what I would tell you to do is find out what even you are building. So to do this, you would come to your little chat, whatever your agent is, and you
[03:06] know, go to ask mode and be like, "What is my tech stack?" You might already know this. I know some of you are like, "Corin, of course I know my tech stack." I I of course I do. Some people don't. Once you know your text stack, what you'll notice is that it will give a bunch of different options here. You know, some of this is going to look like absolute alien language where it's going to be like, "I don't know what this is saying, Corbin. Don't worry. What you want to do is if you are coming from a position of I don't know what any of this means then you approach this with that same logic. What I would suggest you do is simply screenshot this top part come back to this chat here drag it
[03:37] and be like hey what would I search here that would fit my text stack. Then what it's going to do is it's going to understand oh this is cursor directory. Oh there's rules there. Oh it's for the front end. Oh it's for the back end. And then it's going to be like hey you probably want to search react and tailwind front end engineering. Let's find out. H here you go. So highest priority react. So it's like okay React 19 TypeScript shown an image. What does that mean? I come down here. Oh, TypeScript. This is interesting. So I narrow down here to React and TypeScript. We notice that it says TypeScript's important. I would then
[04:07] come here and I would screenshot all of this. And then I would drag it in here and I would say okay, which best fits my specific use case. Now, the reason I'm showing it to y'all like this, as some of y'all or a lot of y'all might be, if you're watching my bigger series here, you might already have the same text I do. So, kudos to you. But some of y'all probably don't. Therefore, your situation is very much you have a bunch of different options here. So, yeah, we got React. But if I scroll down here more, got Expo, got PHP, we got Zad, got Zustin, got Superbase, C. That's why I'm
[04:39] giving you this directory. This thing is awesome. Also, some of you might be questioning and asking, Corbin, why do you keep hearing a little little sound? Let me turn that off. Right now I have my agents where they give me a little sound when they're done. Completion sound turn off. Stop telling me agent that you're done. So what you'll do is once you go down that logic and you find wherever your section is. You can also search it here. You know you be like anything here for react. Let me see next.js. Oh react. Okay nice. So use as you will. But once you find the rule that seems to make the most sense here. So for example it's like second choice next.js TypeScript tailwind CSS build
[05:10] APIs LLM love. What I would do is I would simply click into it and we'll click into it and I'll show you how to modify the rule. But I want you to know that one positive thing about using a directory like this is that since this is community- based typically whatever your text stack is that shows up as Numa is probably been vetted pretty well. So if I click into this, there's probably a reason that this seems to be the most high priority front-end developer prompt. Also, as a side note, when we do the back end in that larger series, we're going to be using a prompt here as
[05:41] well. We're going to be modifying it for Pythonbased backend when we creator GCP stuff. Okay, back over here. Let's just say we love this prompt. This prompt looks amazing. I'm going to simply copy. Now, because of the fact that each one of your apps is special, nice little snowflakes. Every single one's special. That rule is not going to be absolutely optimized for your specific context. So, we got to make it optimized. So, what I want to do is this. I like this rule, but can we make it more specific to my exact app and text stack? Enter. So what this is going to do is it will tell you hey this looks good but there were
[06:12] certain things in here that wasn't relevant for example next.js JS this wasn't relevant we don't need this you use vite removed shad c cann radics you use lucid react so what this is doing is that it's taking you know maybe you got a pizza pie your pizza pie looks amazing you got a nice little pepperoni pizza but you know there's like anchovies on it and you don't like anchovies so you got to remove the anchovies and put the pineapples cuz you're putting pineapples on your pizza cor you like pineapple on your pizza of course I do okay I'm one of the crazies I'm one of the crazies give me pineapple pizza once you have your rule here you're going to capy now
[06:43] what's going to occur here is this is going to be kind of confusing when adding a rule, but we're going to add one together. So, we're going to say add rule. It's going to open this up and you're going to be like, what do I do now? Am I searching something? No, don't worry. Don't worry. You know you just put anything. I'll put test. Enter. Once I do that, I can go back to editor here. What you'll notice is that we got rules cursor rules test MDC. Now, there is a very specific way you got to format this. So, if I come over here, you got to format it very specific. What I want you to do because, you know, no one wants to take the time to actually type. We're just going to paste it in here. It's going to be broken. It's not going to work. Your next question might be, Corbin, I don't even have cursor or rules or any of these little folders.
[07:14] Then all you got to do is simply come over here to agent mode and be like, "Hey, I need a folder called cursor and I need a folder within cursor called rules. So I can create this." Once you do that, what you'll notice is that the test.mdc is not going to be properly structured for it to be handled in your settings. So because it actually does say it was structured correctly, and I looked through the code a little bit, we can actually keep proceeding here. What you might get, which is going to be very annoying, is that if this is the first time you're doing this, you might get a little warning like, "It's not being read. There is an issue. We're not
[07:46] reading your rule." Simply screenshot, put it into the chat over here. Make sure you're in agent mode, and fix it. Now, let me break down something that's going to be important for you to understand. If I go back to editor here, and I click between these two different rules, they're absolutely amazing. I want you to notice that right now, I have it that my test.mdc is always going to be applied for every single chat. So is my senior rule MDC always apply. What we can do and what I will probably do once I build out the bigger series on this channel is I'm going to create one for the front end which I already did and I've created one
[08:16] for the back end which I will create. What I'm going to do and what you should be doing is that if you open up your app builder and today you're like you know what I'm feeling a little spicy. I want to work in the back end. I want that little Python snake. You know you want the Python to go. If you're feeling spicy and you want to work in the back end, then what you're going to do is you're going to turn on your rules specific to the backend. So that always allow is only applied to the backend file. Eg. Let's assume test MDC. This was the absolute most amazing back-end rules I've ever created. I would have always apply on here. And then the
[08:47] senior front-end one I would have apply manually. Therefore, when I open up new chats and I go down little rabbit holes, I know this is always being applied. And the senior one for front end is not being touched. There is no data being used. but I'll be able to use it in the future. What you also notice is that these nice little boolean here is turned off. This is the code that is read by the AM model to understand, not to apply the logic. So, I'm going to say always apply. That's fine. And then come over here. Uh I can go ahead and delete this cuz I am not going to use this test one. This was just for this video. Now, I want to reiterate one last thing here.
[09:18] You will probably get a warning here. You will probably get an error here where it's like, "We're not reading it. I don't like you." That just has to do with the underlying folders, y'all. That has to do with the fact that you probably don't have a cursor folder. You probably don't have a subcategory of rules. You probably don't have this built out yet. To be honest with you, you want to do something really funny. If you don't have that, pause this YouTube video, take a screenshot of this. Quite literally, take a screenshot of this, drag it into your chat, and be like, "I need a similar structure. Help me." And it'll do it. Y'all really thought I was playing when I said anyone can code now? That's how simple it is. Start screenshotting my videos. Anytime
[09:49] a Corbin video comes out, get that screenshot hotkeyed, ready to go. Hot pocket pepperoni. But as you already know, these style videos, make sure to leave a like. It is completely free. Now you know how to upgrade your code with a simple block of text. That is absolutely beautiful. So I'll see you in the next. The Corbin just showed me one of the simplest things that would only take me probably around 10 minutes to set up, but now I'm getting better code. Therefore, my front end and my back end is going to perform at a way better and more effective rate. And I got this all for free type of video. I'm one of the crazies. Give me pineapple pizza.